Please note that since writing this blog post, Bij Ons has closed down
Please note that since writing this blog post, Societe Wunderbar has closed down
It’s very rare these days that I discover a new restaurant just by seeing it. Not by being invited to Like the Facebook page; not by being emailed a press release; not by reading a Thrillist article about it. Just seeing it – in the flesh – while wandering down the street.
So in the spirit of neighbourliness (or possibly just laziness – Bij Ons is about 100 metres from my front door), off we went to try it out. The décor is utilitarian and not exactly brimming with gezelligheid. But the guy running the place was nice enough and the menu pretty cheap, so we weren’t complaining. It was unclear how big the dishes were, so we started small and then just kept ordering. By the end of our meal, we’d got through some delicious goat satay with a sweet, unctuously dark sauce; beef rendang – not the pleasantest cut of meat but a decent sauce; a properly spicy chicken dish whose name I forget but which didn’t hold back on flavour; a slightly disappointing gado-gado, whose vegetables were rather limp (at a guess, I’d say they’d been cooked, frozen and re-heated); and a satisfying mound of fried noodles.
Dinner came to just under €35 for two, including a couple of soft drinks (Bij Ons doesn’t have an alcohol licence). Given that last fact, and the cold sterility of the décor, next time we’ll get takeaway. I recommend you do the same: skip the experience and just order the food. Bij Ons is the perfect hole-in-the-wall.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re looking for a fancy G&T with your satay, look no further than Société Wunderbar. On the Rokin (i.e. nothing off-the-beaten path about this at all), the restaurant occupies a semi-basement space with a confusingly large amount of carpets – on the walls, on the tables, even under the tables. Hygiene fears aside, at least you won’t have any problem with the acoustics. The menu is skewed heavily towards cocktails, so we kicked off Friday night with a house special G&T (infused with lychee and grapefruit) followed swiftly by an Indonesian Pornstar (seemingly the same as a Pornstar Martini). Both were very good, and we were all merrily tipsy before we even started thinking about food. (But hey, what else are Friday nights for?)
When we did get around to eating, we decided to keep it simple and order the sharing platter: all six different types of satay, plus rice, gado-gado and a small bowl of soto ayam (soup) to start. The satay skewers ranged from chicken to goat, and from shrimp to tempeh, but the sauces all rather blended into one. The accompanying vegetables and rice were rather under-generous for five people, and I think all of us went home and ate toast/chips/[delete drunk food as appropriate] afterwards. Frankly, I expect more calories for my buck when spending €20 per person on satay (don’t even begin to ask how much we spent on drinks!).
That being said, what Société Wunderbar lacked in hunger-quenching it made up for in hipster ambience and G&Ts. So it’s your call: hipster or hole-in-the-wall?