Thursday, November 2, 2017

Catching up in Amsterdam

Coconut ice cream, pineapple, licorice sauce
Prinseneiland, November 1, 2017—
TOO MUCH ACTIVITY, uncertain internet connections, laziness — all conspire, as Constant Reader knows too well, to interfere with Blogging Every Day. So here's a quick catchup.

October 30, 2017, Monday: breakfast early at Cafe Mads, rather a nice cafe nearby. We have our usual: caffe latte for the contessa, cappuccino for me (or maybe two), a croissant apiece.

•Mads, Zoutkeetsplein 1, Amsterdam; 📞+31 20 303 45 25

Then we spent the day at the Rijksmuseum where we lunched — I had the Burrata salad, quite tasty: soft burrata, sharp cherry tomatoes, an anchovy, pine nuts. With it, a beer from the tap — Heinekens, of course.

After the museum visit we walked to a nearby poffertjeskraam — a pavilion serving pannekoeken and poffertjes — for our traditional plate of those delicious little popover-like crepes, about the size of a silver dollar, buttery and sweet with their powdered sugar.

•De Vier Pilaren, Stadhouderskade 11, Amsterdam; 📞+31 20 363 68 31

In the evening we walked to a nearby restaurant only to find it closed; then on to another, quite different, upscale, with an interesting menu and wine list; and here I had "ribeye" — cut more like a loin steak, with separate pea and arugula purées. Alas I no longer remember the wine I ordered.

•Wolf Atelier, Westerdoksplein 20, Amsterdam; 📞+31 20 344 64 28

October 31, 2017: Up and away on the train to early for breakfast, so we had the usual one at a Julia's — a chain of "Italian" Illy-type pasta-panini joints — in the station in The Hague (a city I hardly recognize any longer). The coffee was not much better at the marvelous Gemeentemuseum, the object of the day's journey, but the appelgebak, Dutch apple pie, was tasty.

Lunch at a place downtown; no notes. Sorry. Then on getting back to Prinseneiland we were too tired to think of going out, and made do with our hostess's delicious pumpkin soup, some cheese, and a decent red.

     🍷Château Tapie (Languedoc), 2016

November 1, 2017: breakfast at home for a change: coffee from a little Nescafé machine, with foamed milk from another specialized gadget, with delicious dark bread from the not-too-distant Vlaamse bakery. Then a long walk to a canal-house museum on the Herensgracht and, afterward, lunch at the nearby Hof van Eten, where I had a sturdy plate you might call Dutch-Italian nachos: decent old Amsterdammer cheeese melted over halved cherry tomatoes on good dark bread, wtrewn with snippets of chives and heightened with a judicious sprinkling of sliced Jalapeño peppers. (photo); dinner Goude Reaele (photo) Het Hof van Eten

For dinner we walked to the nearby Gouden Reael, which had been closed on Monday. I had a delicious bowl of onion soup, bound with crème fraiche and flavored with tarragon and gruyère. My rotisserie "cockerel" — in fact a small poussin — was slightly undercooked, therefore hard to eat. But the dessert was one of the most interesting and rewarding things we've been presented with yet, listed, simply, as

pineapple
of the rotisserie | licorice | coconut ice cream

The pineapple slices had indeed been roasted a bit and had a wonderful flavor. They sat in a nearly black pool of licorice sauce and were topped with a scoop of perfect coconut ice cream. We talked to the chef about this dish afterward: the menu has just been changed, and this was one of the first plates they'd served. The sauce, he said, is simply licorice, water, and a little egg white, all emulsified in a nitrogen whipper, the sort that's used to whip cream. It was a magnificent dessert.

     🍷an unknown decent bubbly (brought in error); an unknown decent red
•De Gouden Reael, Zandhoek 14, Amsterdam; 📞+31 020 623 3883

RESTAURANTS VISITED, with information and rating: 2016      2015     2017

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