Amsterdam eating notes

There are a lot of places we've visited that I have loved. Only a small few that I could see myself calling home. Amsterdam was one of those places.

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I could just write the words Fried Food and leave it at that. That would give you virtually all you need to know about what I ate in Amsterdam. But in truth, there was more than just fried food, and the words fried food alone perhaps imply I didn't like the food I had. That's far from the case. Amsterdam isn't the best of the culinary destinations I've visited - Italy still wins that honour - but there was plenty of good stuff that passed through my digestive system.

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I should start by mentioning the Eurostar catering. My own, of course. There were four courses, which is entirely possible on a four hour train journey. In fact, I'd go so far as to say four courses is essential. We prefer the quicker two hour journey to Brussels.

Anyway, our fourth course was cheese and crackers (if you discount the train cafe bought Kit Kat that we finished with as a ‘course’). The cheese and crackers course was requested by Phil. That request was quickly followed with a request not to serve said cheese and crackers on a platter. And so I put pre-cut slices of aged cheddar in a ziplock bag, knowing they'd be too hard to cut with the plastic bread and butter knife and paper wrapper I was allowed, and found the least stinky, oozy brie that I could. I'm not sure why Phil thought I'd be inclined to travel with a platter, after all, he's the one who came home with a new mould for making creme caramel in.

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I liked the Brown Bars of Amsterdam. The dark wood lined spaces with dim lighting and an eclectic clientele. The places that open early in the morning and close just a few hours before they open again. The places where you can get a coffee, a freshly squeezed orange juice or a little beer or glass of wine whatever the time of day. A little snifter.

Our favourite was Cafe Thijssen. We went three times. Once for coffee and fizzy water, another for a beer and a glass of wine, and a third for coffee and orange juice. Each time we went we remarked how much we wished for these kinds of places in New Zealand, and in truth, in London. Pubs are great, but they’re not open at 7am for a cup of coffee (and don’t you dare tell me, “Wetherspoons is.”)

We liked Cafe Chris too, even though it was perhaps more full of tourists. It had a big, beautiful communal table that held a big vase of lillies and seated about 12 comfortably in the middle of the room and we liked that. They did good bitterballen with mustard.

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We had a cursory look around the Red Light District on Friday morning. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much going on and we didn't think much of it. There seemed to be more shops selling dreadful looking burgers and fries and stale waffles than shops selling the services of people. I suppose if you're high as a kite you don't notice that the food you're about to consume looks as though it might give you a disease.

We ate markedly better versions of the burger and fried food variety at Kikkie, without the assistance of marijuana. Kikkie reminded me a little of the Plimsoll in London. We shared a good chicken schnitzel sandwich, a plate of soft runny egg with grilled chorizo, and a bowl of fries with mayonnaise. I decided at that point that there's no need for tomato sauce with fries. Mayonnaise is all one needs. The smash burgers at Kikkie looked good; I’d go back for one of those.

Nice to be in a city that seems to have more Chardonnay on the menu than London does.

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On Friday night we had dinner at a very good neighbourhood bistro, Juhique, just down the road from our friends’ place. Good to be able to stumble somewhere easily after a day spent drinking and a pre-dinner bottle of Kylie Minogue prosecco (surprisingly great).

I liked Juhique. I’ve always liked the idea of having a good, reliable and reasonably priced bistro at the end of my street, where the service is lovely and fun, and they know you (well, they knew my friend Alison, not me, of course). We decided to have the four course tasting menu, but added an extra dish - prawn dumplings with charred savoy cabbage in a prawn and chicken consommé. Our wonderful waitress said that it’d be a hard dish to share, so she’d pop a dumpling for each of us into our own bowl with a little bit of broth. Exactly the kind of service I like.

Other plates we ate: a deceptively delicious plate of spiced, roasted pumpkin with a kale tahini sauce and macadamia nut dukkah; grilled scallops with a curried sauce and apple and bacon salad, which was a very beautiful plate of food; slow cooked lamb shoulder with freekeh and a lamb sausage - of course we loved it; and a superb tonka bean flan with a spiced cherry compote and burnt honey sauce. Two delicious bottles of Montepulciano too, because we needed more wine.

After dinner we walked to a jazz bar for a couple of drinks. Some old Dutch men were singing songs. It was fun. I liked that we walked further to drink more booze than we did to eat our dinner.

We went back to Alison and Géza’s place, drank espresso martinis, watched Kiwis saying and doing dumb stuff on Youtube, and Géza disappeared to buy fried cheese and fried sausages from a snack bar.

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One of the things I want for in London is a good bakery within cooee of home. Yes, Pophams is a 20 minute walk away, and Quince 30 minutes, but I wouldn’t call that just around the corner. So I am always pleased when we stay somewhere where there is a good bakery nearby. Louf was the one in Amsterdam.

Alison and I walked there on Saturday morning (5 minutes, not 25) and bought a loaf of bread and a few pastries. My favourite was a sultana and poppy seed studded bun that was split in half, spread with butter and filled with a slice of gouda. So good I had another the next morning in a wee park by the canal.

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After visiting the Van Gogh Museum on Saturday morning we went to Cafe Wildschut for hangover-curing drinks (e.g. coffee, tea, bitter lemon sodas) and a plate of fried snacks (e.g. fried cheese, bitterballen and an assortment of meat and vegetable filled spring rolls). I loved Wildschut. It was a beautiful old Art Deco space, the kind of space that has the patina of an institution. I was particularly taken by the old woman sitting across from us, reading a newspaper, drinking a glass bottle of Coke, and eating a bowl of fries with mayonnaise. This is living.

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More hangover cure stuff: fried food and limp burgers from holes in the wall that opened up once your contactless payment was accepted (when in Rome). The sort of thing that would be better at 2am than 2pm I’m sure, but that was entirely essential after 5,206 drinks the night prior.

And small snifters of house wine in a bar that professed to sell great “Oven baked nachos”. (We ended up at the place that Alison described as “tragic”, but that was actually great fun, since every other person in Amsterdam wanted to go to the bars that we wanted to go to on a wet Saturday afternoon. This is where local knowledge is excellent).

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Dinner at a traditional Dutch restaurant on Saturday evening. I liked the floral paper placemats with matching floral serviettes.

When we were at Wildschut, I saw a blackboard menu advertising courgette soup as the soup of the day. From that point, I’d had a craving all day for soup, so I was delighted that I could have a bowl of old fashioned cream of tomato soup as an entreé. That came with slices of baguette with butter and herb butter that had been piped into little serving dishes. The soup was great.

For my main, I had two little fried slip soles, which were quite hard to eat but very delicious. They came with French fries and mayonnaise, piped mounds of potato that had been deep fried, boiled carrots (which made me laugh) and a most welcome bowl of salad. Géza had a good looking pork cordon bleu. Trust the Dutchman to know what he was doing.

The others had bowls of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream (also piped) and warm chocolate sauce for dessert. When I was asked what dessert I wanted I ordered a glass of chardonnay, which made our waiter laugh. The waiter who I paid asked me when I was going home.

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As I was walking home from St Pancras late on Sunday night I ordered two bowls of hand pulled biang biang noodles and a smacked cucumber salad from Xian Impressions. Very delicious, and just what we needed after a mostly beige weekend. I had forgotten how much I love Xian Impressions. I vowed we’ll get takeaways from there more often (though are they really “takeaways” if you get the food delivered?) Good to be eating nice food from the moment we got home to make me feel happy to be back here. I could’ve stayed in Amsterdam with its bounty of water and cheap bars and apartments with high ceilings and big windows forever. Oh, and its fries with mayonnaise.