therese
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Posts posted by therese
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I've never had rijstaffel before. Were there any notable dishes in the selection you tried?
My favorites were the hard boiled egg, which is fried and then topped with a fairly hot chili sauce, and one of the meat dishes that was described as being more of a Malay variant of a classic dish, that had more complex flavoring than the other items (including clove, if memory serves).
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The bar is In de Wildeman (link). Great bar...I had my first Rodenbach Grand Cru here, a really unusual "sour ale" from Belgium that very few brewers make these days (apparently its subcategory is "Flanders Red Ale").
Hopefully this stop amply fortified you for further research....
ETA: I should mention that I'm answering for Klary b/c I think she left for her Italian vacation this morning, probably won't hear from her til she gets back...
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Ah, yes, I'd forgotten that was coming up so soon.
So, thanks, as I'd promised to tell a Dutch friend (who used to live in Amsterdam but now lives elsewhere in Europe, the same one with the vehement opinions about spelling) the name and location of this bar for his next vist home.
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Because I knew I'd be spending the rest of the week eating mostly not-very-interesting "meeting" food, we decided to go for rijstaffel. I'd had Indonesian food before, in Atlanta, and really liked the complex flavors and textures, but there was only one Indonesian restaurant here and it had since closed. And Chufi had a read a restaurant review about a new-ish place that had given the restaurant in question, Taste for Life, high marks. As it turned out the restaurant didn't quite measure up, but as I remarked to Chufi, "Sometimes dinner isn't about the food."
Here are some random photos:
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Another interesting way to get where you're going while you drink:
We couldn't tell if you rented one of these as a party, or if you hop on/hop off. Certainly you wouldn't have to mind so much about the calories you were consuming.
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Goodness, great photos of places I've only heard about! Well, one place. But that's a 50% unvisited place rate thus far....looking forward to more....
Horrifically bad rebound insomnia from Ambien tonight, so I may as well post again.
After 11 we walked around a bit, heading towards a neighborhood that Chufi likes but that I can't recall the name of (so if you're reading please chime in here, Klary). The canals were teeming with families and visitors in boats all over Amsterdam on this weekend, but this particular area hosted large numbers of very drunk young people (many of them English, though I don't know if these were):
The place we were headed is an a pedestrian-only neighborhood, and at this time of day the streets were full of tables from bars and cafes. Again, I don't know the name of this place, but perhaps you'll recognize it. Here's the view from our table, looking through large windows to the outside:
And here's the view towards the back of the room where we were seated. Note that this is a non-smoking room, particularly nice as it was entirely separate from the other room, and although lacking the ambience of the main bar area was still very nice:
Klary ordered our drinks, which were both (I think) corenwijn. Typing the word reminds me that I ended up in a more or less heated debate with a Dutch colleague later that week. He insisted that corenwijn is always spelled with a "k", not with a "c", and was taken aback to find that it is, in fact, often spelled with a "c". He pronounced the practice degenerate and unsavory.
Lest the alcohol leave me entirely incapacitated we also got some food, including a type of soft sausage called ossenworst:
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Backing up a bit...
I actually arrived on Saturday (let's see, that two weeks ago tomorrow) and checked into the Movenpick Hotel (on the waterfront, very nice and entirely non-smoking), and went out for a long walk (where, exactly, escapes me), meeting up with Chufi/Klary at my hotel that afternoon.
Since we were close to a place that she'd never been and wanted to try, we visited 11, a bar located on the 11th floor of the old post office. It is difficult to find unless you're looking for it, and even then you're likely to be put off by the lack of signage and the trip down a dead end alley and a lobby lined with graffiti and a creaky freight elevator ride to the top of the building, but once you get there it's pretty cool:
Cool views, and at night it must be pretty spectacular, with overhead screens displaying a sort of op-art slide show:
This shot includes some of the view:
In the interest of jet lag and the evening in front of me I had a coffee, and Klary had a soft drink.
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I credit my magic sky blue pen. That and the fact that I was actually hoping for some really dreary, cold, gray weather, as Atlanta's been hot and sunshine-y to excess.
So any of you who enjoyed Sunday's pretty weather, please feel free to give my credit for carting Atlanta's weather along with me. I barely opened my umbrella the whole time I was there.
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And fortunately this establishment sells food, including my choice of a very nice bacon-lettuce-tomato-and, um, chicken (?; something that starts with a "C" according to the receipt sitting under my glass of beer) on brown bread:
Followed by coffee:
A more informative picture of the establishment:
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Vondelpark? Blauwe Theehuis?
Yes, as you see.
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I was actually working (writing) in this location, helped along by a beer and the lovely sunshine and breeze through the surrounding trees:
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I think you're looking off eGullet's Klary's balcony....
Pretty close. Not her balcony, but one of her favorite places. A little bit of country in the city.
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Back from a week of work in the low countries, with a little bit of time for fun.
The following photo is taken from the vantage of a somewhat famous (by eG standards) place. Anybody know where I am?
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It is a unique in my experience. It's a tiny place, you sit on little wooden boxes, definitely not comfortable if you're tall or big.
No problem, as we've been before but it was long ago enough (and there's been very little info here on eG in the interim) that I wanted to make sure it was still worth the trouble.
I found the portion sizes (for the omakase) just fine, and so did my dinner companions, so I'll go ahead and book.
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I believe it it still alive and well and operating to near capacity just under the rader screen. Please post if you go!
Great news. I'll post, though no pictures, as this is a semi-work dinner (and the small size and lighting aren't conducive to photos in any case, as I recall).
Thanks for the info.
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Is Makato still open? My Danish friends recall their meal there with me two years with great fondness, and if it's still there and still doing a lovely job we would like to return when we're all together in D.C. again next month.
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We went on Sunday night and also really liked it. The ribs were outstanding: tender, lots of flavor, great char (key for me, as I don't otherwise eat ribs---my son offered me one of his, and after finishing it I considered stealing a second one). I'm not a huge brisket fan either, but I'll take my husband's word (as he is from San Antonio) that it was very good. The pulled pork was very good, and specifically did not suffer from the way too common problem of having been pulled beyond all recognition.
Our sides included french fries (crinkle cut, totally forgettable), cole slaw (buttermilk dressing, so very good, but a bit too coarsely sliced to eat easily), potato salad (lots of mayonnaise and mustard, and stirred so long that the potato had started to melt into the dressing, so actually perfect), and brunswick stew. I really like brunswick stew, and this version was fine, but the vegetables had pretty much been cooked down to a puree so not my favorite.
We considered trying the banana pudding, but about that time our server got a bit distracted and we got tired of waiting so finally just asked for our bill.
So, yeah, best bbq ITP.
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One more piece of what could, I suppose, be called culture shock. In the first three weeks of my being here, I lost 15 pounds (granted, I was on tour. I have to eat like a horse on tour if I want to even maintain weight).
In the ensuing year, I lost ten more. Without trying, and no, I am neither anorexic nor bulimic (singing and barfing: not compatible).
This means that I am currently holding steady at 59 kilos, or just under 130 pounds, down from my high of 155 pounds when I left NYC (I was NOT happy about that higher number). I am 5'11", or, if you prefer, 1m80.
Now, as you will see this week, I eat. I eat a lot. I'm in excellent health. So...what the hell???
Granted, I get a fair amount of exercise and singing burns calories like crazy.You are happy and relaxed. Even when you're busy you're busy in an excited and energetic way, not a stressed way. And your body reflects that.
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Salamanca, where I'll be from Thursday on, is one of only a few towns left in Spain where they give you a free tapa, as in a big serving of something, with your drink order, no matter what it is (water, wine, beer, whatever). We will be out & enjoying at LEAST once. You'll also get to experience the cooking of C's mother, you lucky people. She's one of the best cooks I've ever had the fortune to meet.
Are you planning on showing us the frog while you're there?
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I'm feeling a really bad envy headache coming on, so before it gets too bad I'll mention how much I'm looking forward to this blog. Even if it is going to mean I've got an envy headache all week long.
Looking forward to seeing Salamanca again, having spent a week there a couple of years ago.
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Boiled, of course.
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Ah, so you stayed in our favorite apartment on Rue Montpensier again? Not much cooking, though.
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When I lived in Atlanta there was one Indonesian restaurant (in a city of 5 million people). And 50 Indian restaurants (not statistically accurate...therese or someone from Atlanta, help me out here
).And that one Indonesian place has gone under (you're thinking of the one on Cheshire Bridge, on the side of the street opposite Hong Kong Harbor?). Several Malaysian places (including our branch of Penang). Way more than 50 Indian restaurants (I ate a lunch of chat yesterday after a hard morning's shopping at Target), and bajillions of Vietnamese and Korean as well as every possible flavor of Latin American. Thai pretty common, as are various permutations of Middle Eastern.
Overall a good reflection of the immigrant mix.
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Great blog. I love your small house---it looks really comfortable, and it's not so much that your footprint is all that small (dining on a rooftop terrace, after all), but that it overlaps with other people's due to the density. Brilliant.
Going Dutch...
in Elsewhere in Europe: Dining
Posted
Oh, and I've just recalled that my nice lunch at the Vondelpark was on Monday, not Sunday.
After I finished my work I had another few hours before I needed to catch the train to Antwerp, and so decided to visit a museum. I am generally really terrible about visiting museums, but I had visited the Anne Frank house on Sunday evening. As it turns out that the Anne Frank house is entirely on topic for this forum, as her father ran a business selling fruit pectin for making jam and jelly at home (called "Opekta") and also had a spice shipping business.
Spices also figured prominently in the museum I visited on Monday afternoon. You have to be 18 to visit this particular museum.