De Compagnon, and a weekend with Mr and Mrs Foodie
When I was a student in Amsterdam (which is longer ago than I care to admit), I took my parents to Blauw aan de Wal. They were just called Mr and Mrs Hampton back then, before they’d been forced to change their names to Mr and Mrs Foodie. But they (like I) have always been into food, and they (like I) have a bit of a naughty side. So they loved the fact that I took them through the red-light district, before leading them down a back alley to what transpired to be a tranquil, elegant and eminently classy restaurant.
I knew I was onto a winner, then, when I led them down the first few metres of the Warmoesstraat, replete with hen parties and Brits abroad, to de Compagnon: a similarly civilised, similarly ‘Bourgondische’ restaurant. The waitress was very smiley and bubbly (which my Dad – a retired hotelier, restaurateur and professional flirt – absolutely loved) while the waiter looked like a slightly older version of my teenage nephew, nervously and politely trembling his way through his first week on the job. The restaurant itself had a kind of romance to it, born of candle light, antique mirrors and tiny tables tucked into several mezzanine levels.
We were presented with two amuse bouches simultaneously. The first comprised the yolk of a quail’s egg (supposedly ‘cooked’ at -20 degrees C) with herring caviar, pea-shoot purée and a shot of crisp saltiness from a parmesan crisp: textured, tasty and creative. The second was a sort of snail tempura with pumpkin: it tasted less odd than it sounds.
To start, I ordered scallops with calamari and avocado mousse. Only the kitchen forgot the calamari, so the smiley waitress brought me out a fairly generous plateful of the stuff to make up for it. The tentacles were lightly battered and fried; the meatier parts were served thinly sliced and raw, dressed with lemon. Both were excellently prepared, as were the scallops. The dish could only have benefited from a little more of something citric to cut through the richness of the seafood and avocado.
Mr Foodie and I both ordered the ‘Rocky Mountain Beef’ as a main course, with more truffle shavings than were really necessary (then again, when has the point of truffle shavings ever been necessity?). The beef was served in two cuts: the fillet was just seared, while the sweetbreads were floured and sautéed. A few vegetables made an appearance on the plate (half a baby carrot, a quenelle of mushroom caviar, and a few leaves of something kale-like) while the veal jus served on the side was savoury and moreish; but again, the dish lacked a kick of something fresh to wake up my palate.
I hoped dessert might do the trick. Mine comprised red fruits, ice cream (which I believe was supposed to be peppery in some way – it didn’t come through for me), a biscuit crumb, and something resembling a bavarois: cold, dairy and fruity. It all tasted very nice, if you like fruit and ice cream (and I do) but that was pretty much all it was: fruit and ice cream.
Dinner, complete with a champagne aperitif and a bottle of Barbera d’Alba during the meal, came to around €80 each. Mr Foodie paid (which I thought was only fair, after the three-course dinner party I’d laid on on the Friday night) before we wound our way back through the coked-up stags, the vegetal fragrance of burning weed, and the dazed glazed gaze of tourists who’d just stepped out of Central Station… ah, this is Amsterdam, baby…
