MOS restaurant Amsterdam: reviewed

A few years ago, the IJ River was kind of like your own elbow: you knew it was there but you never really saw it or mentioned it. Nowadays, the IJ is like the thigh-gap or the side-boob: suddenly everyone’s talking about it. With the opening of the A’DAM Toren on the north side of the river and the development of Houthavens and IJdok on the south-west shore, it seems like all the hottest places to be these days have an IJ-view. And Amsterdam restaurant MOS fits right into that trend.

Perched on the tip of the IJdok and overlooking the boats passing by in front of the EYE Film Museum, MOS has a cool, serene atmosphere thanks to its watery view. The staff seem pretty calm too – relaxed and unflustered and up for a little banter if everyone feels like it. And that chill-factor extends to the menu as well: you can have as many or as few courses as you like; if you take the wine pairings you can skip a glass here or there if it feels like too much; there’s no pressure to eat or drink more than you feel comfortable with.

Luckily for this site, I feel comfortable with eating and drinking quite a lot. (Which obviously means my thigh-gap is non-existent.)

Dinner got off on the right foot with a host of tasty little amuse-bouches: a small but perfectly formed bowl of basil bouillon; savoury churros with jalapenos, grissini with harissa mayonnaise; and something I can only describe as a bath pearl of smoky BBQ and yuzu flavours.

Only it turned out those weren’t the “real” amuse – that was yet to come. And when it did, I wanted to eat the dish it came in, let alone the food itself. On top of this stunning pearlescent glass plate (pictured above – it reminded me of mother-of-pearl), you’re looking at a Middle East-inspired dish of baba ganoush, a tapioca-based crispy cookie, zingy crushed apple, and creamy dollops of curried mayonnaise. Enchanting.

MOS’s menu is at once very internationally inspired and locally led. The first course fell into the former category: langoustine and pork belly came with charred pineapple and had a kind of smoky, umami-rich, southern BBQ flavour. The Austrian wine that was paired with it had perfect notes of pineapple that echoed the dish.

The second course, however, felt much more Dutch: corvina (a white fish that I wasn’t familiar with) was milky-soft and came with Hollandse garnalen (those tiny, grey-pink Dutch shrimps) and pickled beetroot. The bright green sauce was made from runner beans and served chilled. The pink stuff on top of the fish was like popping candy. (Pictured above.)

Next up came another fish dish: gurnard with the most insanely crispy skin, roasted cauliflower, red onion jelly, and a hearty sauce made from Dutch oude kaas and truffle. The dish was an umami bomb, in the best sense. It also went hand-in-hand with an interesting Barbera/Syrah blended wine from Galilee, Israel.

The meaty main was veal with celeriac and pistachio purée (hence the green), varieties of onions (leek, spring onion, and so on), mushrooms (don’t ask me what type – I can’t stand mushrooms so picked them out!) and a tarragon jus.

Those four courses plus all the amuse-bouches cost me €53 (there was no price penalty for choosing four savoury courses rather that three plus a dessert, as is mostly the case) and the paired wines a further €30ish. Yes, it’s not cheap – but eating out in Amsterdam routinely seems to cost me €60 for a fairly average end product. So to spend an extra €20-30 on multiple courses of extremely accomplished food that (justly) holds a Michelin star seems altogether worth it. And when you throw in the view over Amsterdam’s hottest bit of water as well, it’s not exactly a hard sell…