Restaurant review: Shakshuka Breakfast at Paviljoen van Beuningen

Please note that since writing this blog post, Paviljoen van Beuningen (Shakshuka) has closed down

I regularly get emails from people wanting recommendations for a romantic diner à deux, or a venue for a hen party, or somewhere to take their in-laws… I try to reply as best I can, but there’s one particular question that always stumps me: where to go with kids.

There’s no hiding the fact that I’m not exactly a kiddy person. I grew up with brothers 15 years older than me and spent playtime at primary school hanging out with the teachers because I didn’t have anything in common with my classmates. I don’t have a maternal bone in my body. And yet my friends are starting to procreate at a relentless pace, and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that if I want to have any kind of a social circle left, I’m going to need to find a way to incorporate children into my restaurant habit.

Enter Paviljoen van Beuningen: possibly the most child-friendly café in Amsterdam. I ended up there on Sunday morning rather circuitously: I’d heard about a series of literary pop-up dinners that take place there, then checked out the website of the venue itself and saw that it advertises “The Shakshuka Breakfast” every Saturday and Sunday from 10 am till 3 pm. Being a huge Ottolenghi fan, I am clearly crazy about shakshuka (I’ll get onto what it actually is in a moment), which is how I ended up in the middle of a giant adventure playground eating Middle Eastern brunch whilst small humans provided a source of strange circus-like entertainment…

Shakshuka itself is a Middle Eastern dish that involves eggs being broken into a pan filled with a spicy tomato and onion concoction, although van Beuningen’s menu includes a second version based on spinach and feta. Me being the Amsterdam Foodie ‘n’ all, I took one for the team and ordered “The Full Shakshuka”, however: i.e. all of the above, plus a sort of breakfast mezze of hummus, labneh, Arabic salad with tahini, olives, pickles, and the most phenomenal nutty roasted red pepper dip. Oh, and a pile of pitas. Don’t tell me I never do anything for you, foodies…

The shakshuka itself was grand. At least, the original version was. I was less keen on the green one, which lacked depth and seasoning while the egg whites were near raw. I also ordered a couple of juices – beetroot, apple and lime, plus the juice of the week – both of which tasted fantastic and clearly offset the vast amounts of food I was eating. (Right?)

Brunch may have been a little more expensive than I’d usually pay, but the €18 felt well worth it for the Middle Eastern Full Monty, as it were. And besides, we got to watch one little girl attempt to walk up a slide while her brother threw himself down it. You can’t put a price on entertainment like that…

Editor’s note: no children were hurt in the making of this review. The fact that the editor’s boyfriend may have crushed his balls playing on the seesaw afterwards is neither here nor there. He is 32.

Shakshuka Breakfast at Paviljoen van Beuningen: kiddy paradise

all the info

Paviljoen van Beuningen (Shakshuka) (Brunch)
☆☆☆☆☆
€€€

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