Those of you who subscribe to my monthly newsletter will know that my professional circumstances are in a bit of a transition phase at the moment. Being the Amsterdam Foodie isn’t a full-time occupation (or rather, sometimes it feels like it is, but it’s not the kind of occupation that pays the bills) so for the last four-and-a-half years I’ve also worked as a writer in a tiny communications agency in the centre of the city. It’s been the one constant in a life that has otherwise been full of change and new experiences. It was no light decision, then, to accept a new job writing for a corporate giant (albeit a food-related one) employing thousands of people in several countries. I am nervous about it, to say the least.
But before I start, I have two weeks of holiday. And what better way to fill my time than to do what foodies do best: eat. It’s Restaurant Week at the moment, which is helpful, and I’ve had visitors, so there’s been no shortage of restaurants to review…
Pompstation
It was SAIL 2010 last weekend, so various restaurants had special seafood menus – Pompstation being one of them. We entered the warehouse-chic building to see a DJ’s hefty decks alongside a similarly large table arrayed with fruit de mer. Clearly, we had to eat lobster. Baby lobsters were €22 each, which was good value (in relative terms), and came with samphire, sea aster, tarragon butter, chips and bearnaise sauce. I rather wished the lobsters weren’t so baby though.
Before that, we’d eaten starters of a potato and bayonne ham terrine (tasty, truffle-y, but a bit more potato-y than I’d expected) and cod carpaccio with mini-scallops in an orange dressing (fresh, zingy and generous). With a couple of exceptions (the addition of random deep-fried potato matchsticks to every dish, for instance), the food was good quality. It was the service (surprise surprise) that let the place down. We were brought the wrong wine but charged for the wine we’d actually ordered; we were ignored when it came to dessert time (meaning we didn’t actually order dessert in the end); and the waitress unconcernedly poured our wine like she was pouring shot glasses on a bar: half of it ended up on the table. As a venue, however, it’s a good night out.
Elkaar
Nicola and I decided to ‘do lunch’. It’s Restaurant Week, so a three-course lunch (plus two amuses bouche) costs €20, which is definitely good value in a pricer place like Elkaar. Sadly, we were the only people in the restaurant, which just goes to show that even capital-city restaurants with top marks from people like Johannes van Dam struggle to get bums on seats at lunchtime.
They served us a sort of deconstructed caprese salad in a glass (tomato mousse, basil oil, creamy tomato foam) and a salty, bright green, foamy soup as amuses. The soup was supposed to be courgette (I think) but I wasn’t crazy about it. The starter was interesting (and I mean interesting in a positive, non-British way), comprising tuna tartar, garlic crème brulee and clam bitterballen. The combination was a little odd, but the individual parts were well made. I probably wouldn’t have ordered our main course had we had a choice, because it involved mushroom ravioli, chanterelles and morels (embarrassingly, mushroom hatred is my guilty food secret) so I can’t really comment on whether they were any good or not. The guinea fowl, however, was delicious: crispy skinned, tender and sitting in just enough meaty jus to moisten the potatoes and beans. I expect Nicola liked dessert best, however, as it involved chocolate in its every constituent part: dark bombe, white mousse, and shards of chocolate and caramel in ice cream.
The service was pretty good, but then again you’d expect that since we were the only two customers.
Koh-I-Noor
It’s hard to find decent Indian food in Amsterdam, but Koh-I-Noor is one of the better places I’ve tried. We ordered chicken saag (spinach), lamb dhansak (lentil curry) and a spicy aubergine dish. My only criticism was that the chicken saag was far too salty, but the other two dishes were medium-hot and full of flavour. And didn’t all taste the same, which is a trap that many Indians here seem to fall into. What’s more, dinner was only about €20, which is just as well when you’re temporarily unemployed.
Het Schoolhuis
Not technically in Amsterdam, het Schoolhuis is in Holysloot – accessible via a picturesque bike ride into Waterland. Or probably by car, if you happen to have one. I always seem to end up there halfway round one of the fiets routes that I do now and again when the weather’s nice and I have visitors. We ate paninis and ciabattas with fresh sheep’s cheese from Dikoeve farm just down the road in Ransdorp. You can’t get more local than that. And they do great appeltaart, too.
