Volt: any restaurant that buys its cheese from Kef is my kinda place

Volt had been recommended to me by my boss at MegaCorp a couple of years ago. But given that a) she’s a regular and I wasn’t too keen on bumping into her on a Saturday night; b) she’s Head of Communications, which means she can afford to go to far more expensive restaurants than I can; and c) she lives in Oud-Zuid (nuff said), I’d avoided Volt until now. Turns out my prejudices (like most prejudices) were ill-founded.

Volt is unexpectedly affordable, with starters all coming in at under €10 and mains in the €14-18 range. It’s also neither pretentious nor uptight (although the service was a little hit and miss the night we were there).

I started with small, firm parcels of stuffed squid served with fried chorizo and a tomato jus. In general, I absolutely love this combination of surf ‘n turf, and this dish didn’t disappoint. My main was ravioli stuffed with Jerusalem artichokes and dressed with a nutty butter sauce. It came with some other roasted roots and toasted nuts – a festival of autumnal vegetables. It lacked a citrus kick so I asked for a segment of lemon to squeeze on top – a DIY flavour enhancer. I’ve already mentioned the cheese I had to follow, which was as delicious as you’d expect from Kef.

As I said, the service was a little hit and miss: on the one hand, a couple of our drinks got forgotten; on the other, the waiter warned us that the white wine we’d ordered hadn’t spent much time in the fridge and suggested we order another instead. While you could argue that the wine should have been kept at the right temperature in the first place, I appreciated the fact that he didn’t just pour us a bottle of warm wine (which has happened to me on numerous occasions in the past).

So, while Volt may be on the border of de Pijp and Oud-Zuid – two of Amsterdam’s most prestigious neighbourhoods – I’ll be recommending it to those who live elsewhere in Amsterdam, too. If for nothing other than that cheese board…