One of the lessons confirmed by my Moroccan travels is that drinking less alcohol and not eating bacon/chorizo/other porky goodness makes you lose weight and helps clear your skin. Distressingly but inescapably, the reverse seems also to be true.
Since my return, catching up with friends in Amsterdam has – inevitably – led to normal service being resumed. It’s not that I have an unhealthy lifestyle; I’d call it ‘balanced’. And you wouldn’t trust a foodie on a diet, would you?
So Tuesday night saw me going out for dinner and drinks with my French foodie friend (aka Scary French Lady) to van Kerkwijk – a sort of international eetcafe: cosy, yet cosmopolitan. There was no menu as such, so we attempted to remember the list of dishes described to us by our tall, yummy, fuzzy-headed waiter (fuzzy as in hair, not hersens).
I went for the paté, which transpired to be of the smooth, chicken liver variety. It came with very fresh bread and a small salad garnish, but could’ve used something sweet like onion marmalade or chutney. Scary French Lady had carrot and coriander soup, which was full of well seasoned flavour but might’ve tasted a bit more earthily carroty.
Next, we both ordered the monkfish wrapped in bacon and rosemary, with a green mustard sauce. The latter was not as over-powering as it sounds (in fact, it was subtle enough for us to have forgotten what it was by the time we tasted it), and the fish was sensibly cooked. We avoided the North African tagine and Indonesian chicken, having both just returned from holidays in those parts, and were pleased to munch on the side of chips as an alternative to couscous and rice, respectively.
Dinner came to just over €25 each, including a carafe of the house white. My T-zone might look more like a war zone, and my jeans may be filling out again, but I’ll take wine and bacon over a perfect body any day.
