Please note that since writing this blog post, Mashua has closed down
I’ve been pretty lucky insofar as keeping friends around goes. As an international type in Amsterdam, you more or less expect that some friends will go back to their native country, or move on to another work assignment elsewhere. But in the six years I’ve lived here, my core group of friends has stuck around. Better still, they’re all buying houses and shacking up with Dutchmen, which means the chances of their staying local is even greater. But in 2011, I’ve had to say goodbye to a few good friends. Two are Americans who are bound for the States, and we miss them.
Last weekend, however, we were lucky enough to have both of them back in town. (They can’t keep away, clearly, which only goes to prove they should probably move back here.) We decided to check out a Peruvian restaurant for dinner, before heading on to drink, dance and make merry on the Leidseplein. Mashua isn’t all that new any more, but I’d still never visited despite cycling past on numerous occasions.
It took us a while to get drinks, but since half the Yanks were three sheets to the wind by the time we met, it didn’t much matter. Besides, the wines (a Grüner Veltliner and a Carmenère) when they came were good.
To start, I had thinly sliced raw tuna drowned in a sauce that was heavy on lemon juice and sesame. There was nothing wrong with the sauce; there was just way too much of it. I could barely find the tuna at the bottom of the lake.
My main was one of those disappointed-expectations dishes. It had sounded so great on the menu: ‘twice-cooked knuckle of lamb, glazed with honey, dried yellow peppers, wine, cilantro, hint of espresso and lavender, with red bean “tacu-tacu”, purée of pear’. What appeared was brown. Very brown. The lamb shank was coated in (I presume) what it said in the description, but I missed all brightness of flavour. And lavender? Espresso? You’d have to be a MasterChef judge to identify those two. I have no idea what ‘tacu-tacu’ is, but from what arrived on the plate it seemed like a small mound of rice topped with dried-out bean purée. The pear was nowhere to be tasted. It wasn’t that it was even that bad – it just wasn’t what it said on the tin.
For dessert, I had the oddest mousse I’ve ever eaten. It claimed to be made from a tropical fruit known as ‘lucuma’, but it tasted exactly like green tea. I don’t like green tea. I guess that wasn’t Mashua’s fault, but it didn’t exactly help my impression.
Dinner came to €60, which I wouldn’t have minded paying were it not for the fact that I was considerably disappointed with every course. Sometimes people ask me whether my being critical of the food in a restaurant ruins my enjoyment of going out for dinner with friends. But in my head they’re entirely separate. And when I’m out with friends as good as these, I’ll always have a great evening – no matter what the food’s like.
