Eating Netherlands :: All Things Andy Gavin

Archive for Eating Netherlands

Eating Dutch – The Seafood Bar

May26

Restaurant: The Seafood Bar

Location: Amsterdam

Date: July 4, 2023

Cuisine: Seafood

Rating: Pretty similar to a San Francisco style seafooder

Our final meal of the trip (not including bad plane food).

It’s always hard to find somewhere that will please our entire large group and so we tried pretty hard to get into this small chain Amsterdam seafooder — which would.

The menu.

This lovely Sancerre that birthday girl Emma chose.

Fried calamari rings with mayo — nice.

Bitterballen. The classic Dutch croquette and I was told an excellent one at that.

Sea bass ceviche.

Salmon tartare with avocado.

Oysters of several types.

This epic plat du mer had lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, salmon, crab (two types), crab salad, Dutch shrimp (the tiny ones), lagostinas, clams (2 types), mussels and more!

Cesar salad with salmon.

Cod filet with pumkin and beurre blanc.

Dover sole.

Fish and chips “kibbeling” style (in small peices).

Fish and chips “whole cod” style — like in England.

Extra fries with mayo because it’s Holland.

Chocolate ice cream.

Chocolate bavoroise with chocolate ice cream. A bit dry.

Lemon meringue pie.

Expresso martini.

Expresso.

A fun and tasty end to our epic trip. The Netherlands part of the trip wasn’t food focused — nor actually was any of this trip — but we did have some really nice stuff. This place is fairly similar to Santa Monica’s Watergrill or many California-style seafooders, but it had a Dutch bent and was quite delicious.

For more Dutch dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Amsterdam, Eating Amsterdam, Eating Dutch, Eating Netherlands, Seafood, The Seafood Bar

Eating Amsterdam – Dignita

May24

Restaurant: Dignita

Location: Amsterdam

Date: July 4, 2023

Cuisine: Cafe

Rating: Solid

On our final day in the Netherlands we shuffled west to Amsterdam.

We stopped at this hipster spot in central Amsterdam for a quick lunch.

Attractive outdoor space. For a country with far worse weather than LA, they sure have a lot more nice outside dining — boo on you LA regulators!

Salmon Benny — aka benedict but over hash browns. Cute!

Dutch pancake.

Avo Toast or similar.

Cilbir. Turkish eggs and yogurt with a side of bacon.

Bacon does make everything better.

Shakshouka with yellow tomatoes.

Cappuccino. Dignita would do well in LA — it has a similar hipster/international vibe going on and very good “all day brunch.”

For more Dutch dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Dutch cuisine, Eating Amsterdam, Eating Dutch, Eating Netherlands

Eating Grubbenvorst – Clevers

May22

Restaurant: Clevers

Location: Lottumseweg 1, 5971 BT Grubbenvorst, Netherlands. +31 77 366 1459

Date: July 2, 2023

Cuisine: Ice Cream Parlor

Rating: Over-the-top sundaes with awesome Ice-Cream

Clevers (pronounced Cleavers) is a local institution in this land of excellent dairy.

For a town of just a few hundred it’s huge!

They have a book-like menu, but here was just a relevant page. They serve a vast array of sundaes.

Mixed berry.

Strawberries and Cream.

Mango Sorbetto.

Pineapple (served in the special pineapple cup).

The backside.

A slightly different berry sundae.

Hazelnut Crunch.

Chocolate Fantasie. Mousse and brownies adorned with ice cream.

Another view.

Chocolate, Vanilla, and Straciatella ice creams.

The Punaise. Hazelnut, walnut, cookies, praline, chocolate, straciatella, truffles, whipped cream and more. This was being bad, really bad. The ice cream was excellent — not gelato — but very creamy soft regular style ice cream. Lots of good stuff in here.

This was a great ice cream place and while the flavors weren’t particularly exotic, the milk quality and soft creamy style of ice cream was first rate.

For more Dutch dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Dessert, Eating Dutch, Eating Grubbenvorst, Eating Netherlands, Ice cream

Eating Maastricht – Spice of India

May20

Restaurant: Spice of India

Location: Achter Het Vleeshuis 27, 6211 GR Maastricht, Netherlands. +31 43 321 6375

Date: July 1, 2023

Cuisine: Indian

Rating: Slow, and too much sugar

I was excited to get some Indian as I’ve had pretty much nothing but Turkish for 3 weeks. This place in Maastricht is a favorite of my friend Gus’.

The town of Maastricht is super cute and lively — it’s been a bustling trade city since Roman times.

Cute interior.

We had as huge table.

Perfectly pleasant petite chablis.

My cryptic notes.

Papadum. These were good.

The chutneys didn’t look like much but the raita was great and the red one had a nice complex sweet spice. There was also a super hot one (not pictured) that was the only really hot thing of the night.

Fried Shrimp. Very panko fry.

Samosas. We had veggie, chicken, and lamb. The shells was nice and thin and crispy, more phylo, but the interior was dry.

King Prawn Kashmiri. Very creamy and mild. VERY creamy as in about 50% heavy cream.

Chicken Tikka Masala. This was the palest creamiest CTM I’ve ever had. Flavor was nice, buit it was really sweet and very mild (and creamy).

Saag Paneer. This had a rougher texture which I liked.

Vegetable Korma. Again super mild and creamy.

Lamb Vindaloo. Supposedly spicy but it wasn’t. At least it wasn’t mostly cream.

Daal.

Fish Dhamask. Nice and garlicky. Fish was scarce.

Lamb Korma. You guessed it: mild and creamy (but nice).

Basmati Rice.

Naan.

Mixed Tandoori Grill. Not enough real meat here.

Ganesh supervises. The food was tasty but WAY WAY too creamy and sweet. Almost dessert like. Also, we had a massive service gap. The apps took awhile and then there was a 2 hour gap between the samosas and a sudden drop of every other item simultaneously. We ate all the papadum and chutneys during the wait! Still, it’s interesting to see Indian in different countries. Still, the company was so good we enjoyed ourselves.

I always find trying “3rd party” national cuisines abroad very interesting. By 3rd party I mean that this was Indian food (3rd party), in the Netherlands. Trying Dutch food in NL or Indian Food in India would of course be more direct, but here it’s Indian filtered through a Dutch lens: in this case a mild and creamy lens!

For more Dutch dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Eating Dutch, Eating Maastricht, Eating Netherlands, Indian cuisine, Maastricht

Eating Maasbree – Gemeintehoës

May18

Restaurant: Gemeintehoës

Location: Dorpstraat 20, 5993 AN Maasbree, Netherlands. +31 77 850 9553

Date: June 30, 2023

Cuisine: Dutch gastropub

Rating: Solid

Our first night in the Netherlands we went to this local place in Maasbree. It’s basically contemporary dutch.

The building

The menu.

Vino.

Tuna carpaccio. I think this might have been beef with a tuna sauce. It was good regardless.

Beef Carpaccio.

Beet Carpaccio.

Burrata Salad.

Salmon and Shrimp.

Tom yum soup.

Tomato Soup.

Mustard soup. Yeah, cream and mustard!

Bread.

Simple pasta. Not simple enough for the boy.

Shrimp “Asian style.” Maybe Indonesian.

Shrimp chips.

Salmon.

Sea bass (crusted).

Bacon burger.

Beef short ribs.

BBQ ribs with mayo. These were pretty good, actyually. Covered in sauce.

Side salad.

Fries with mayo. The dutch way — but not drowned in mayo in this case.

Vlaai (pronouced closer to Fly) is the dutch word for pie — they have a lot of it. I suspect they brought it to American in the 18th century.

A chocolate flourless cake.

Some other dessert with a lot of ice cream and whipped cream.

The local specialty vlaai.

Basically custard tart with whipped cream and chocolate. Yummy!

Ice cream sundae.

With the chocolate sauce.

Coffee.