I have already posted a bit about the Netherlands as a country. Now I want to tell you about what has become one of my favorite spots in Europe: Amsterdam. Funnily enough, I lived nearby my entire life - first in northern Germany, close to Hamburg, and then even closer, in Cologne - yet I didn't make it there until 2009. A colleague from work (who later became my girlfriend and now is my wife) asked if I wanted to join her and her American friends for a 3-day weekend in Amsterdam. Having never been there and having nothing special planned for that weekend in September, I said yes. We took the train from Cologne, which is a convenient 3 hour ride to Amsterdam Centraal.
We stayed at a generic hotel a bit off the beaten track in a nondescript part of town, a mistake we didn't make the next time we went (see here).
Rachel had been there before but only for quick one-day work trips. Both of us consider amazing food of first importance so before we went, we planned out what we wanted to eat. We both travel with the philosophy that you have to get lost to find the true soul of the city so we did not plan trips to any particular site, only to particular restaurants.
We arrived in the afternoon and went straight to our first food destination, a restaurant to which we return every chance we get (it is always our first stop when we make a trip to this beautiful city): Restaurant AS. It is located in a former chapel in a residential area close to the Dutch version of the World Trade Center and you have to be lost to find it… At least our taxi driver was thoroughly lost that first night.
The chef, Sander Overeinder, creates amazing dishes with local ingredients, preparing a lot of them in a wood-fired oven. His philosophy includes a very strong focus on local products from small producers. His philosophy also includes a magnificent selection of digestifs (I have found that most Americans don't know what a digestif is so, if you too are wondering, it is an alcoholic drink that aids in digestion. Essentially, anything made from fruit and hitting around the 40% ABV mark will do it. Whiskeys also work well, though I prefer a good grappa, a schnapps (or eau de vie, depending on the language spoken where you happen to be), or even something in the ouzo line. The last time we were at As, I had a schnapps that tasted like a Douglas fir tree… but I digress), which you will definitely need after this meal.
Our dinner that night included incredible charcuterie; a salad with gorgonzola, a cheese that I have always hated but which, this time around, I actually liked (this experience led me to venture further into the world of cheeses and I became bolder and now I love a wide variety of the stronger cheeses but particularly stilton); monk fish; and pigeon with Dutch vegetables.
The next day we did what I love to do best. We wandered. This proved to be fortuitous because it led us to this little café with the flakiest of croissants, a cappuccino to rival those you can get in Italy, real whipped cream, fresh squeezed orange juice, and cheesecake. This is the gloriousness of Latei, which one finds by walking through the middle of the red light district, though we didn't realize that it was the red light district until much later. It was so good that we drug my friends back there when their delayed flight finally arrived on Sunday.
We spent the day wandering through the streets, deciding on our favorite boats in the canals and trying to decide where to go for dinner. We also visited one of Rachel's favorite shoe shops, Sacha. According to her, Germans do not do cute shoes for women (shoes for men are another story entirely though). The Dutch, on the other hand, are completely mad and make über-fabulous ones (her opinion, not mine). Given our incredibly heavy breakfast, we decided on a light lunch. So we had charcuterie, bread, cheese and wine at Envy. This place, right by one of the main canals has fabulous outdoor seating with a beautiful view and excellent people watching. It is part of IQ Creative, a group that also owns Vyne, a wine bar that we visited on a later trip (www.vyne.nl) and quite enjoyed, and some other restaurants that we still have to explore. We enjoyed the atmosphere of Envy (and, for that matter, Vyne), the friendliness of the service and the huge selection of wines. The food was great too and, if you like to watch the chefs at work, this restaurant has an open kitchen. We enjoyed it so much that we spent a lazy summer afternoon on a different trip sitting at one of their outside tables, splitting a bottle of cold Grüner Veltliner (a lovely light, slightly grassy white wine from Austria) with yet more charcuterie and people watching.
After a lot more wandering, we meandered our way to our dinner reservation at Mashua, which is the only Peruvian restaurant in all the Netherlands. Well, aside from its sister restaurant Casa Peru. It is conveniently located in the city center - on the same street as Envy, incidentally. Rachel says that her favorite cuisine is probably Peruvian so she chose our dinner menu. We sampled the amazing ceviche and the lomo saltado, her favorite, and the arroz de mariscos (seafood rice). The food here is pragmatically Peruvian fusion, which simply means that the chef cooks Peruvian food with European ingredients when practicable. We love it and have been back, though only once because we do try to explore new restaurants each time we go.
Sunday, as previously mentioned, Rachel's two jet lagged friends finally arrived and we took them to our little café for restorative cappuccino, croissants, and sandwiches. Then we went to the Van Gogh museum. It is filled to the roof with Van Gogh's art and, at the time, much to Rachel's pleasure, it also had quite a collection of Monet's art. These are two of her favorite artists. If you are interested in art, this museum is definitely a must (check on their website here for the rotating collection), and it is located right across from the Rijksmuseum which also has an extensive art collection and has been an operating museum for about 125 years now.
Art seems to make one hungry, so we decided to get a healthy lunchtime snack: double fried french fries. You can slather a wide spread of sauces on top of them, including my favorites, mayonnaise and curry ketchup. Rachel loathes both so she went the boring route and ate hers sauceless. This particular little hole-in-the-wall (literally) in a back alley full of trash cans, Vlaams Friteshuis Vleminckx, is pretty famous among locals and tourists alike, and getting your fix during lunch hours usually includes a long line. Watching the fry and sauce masters at work is quite interesting, plus the wait gives you a chance to decide which of the 25 different sauces you would like on your fries. The service is obviously minimal, but if you have any questions regarding the different sauces, the staff is always knowledgable and helpful. As for the eating of said fries, you can do what we occasionally do, and sit on one of the stoops of the neighboring houses or you can continue down the alley away from the shopping street and try to find a seat on one of the park benches in the next street over or you can simply eat them as you window shop.
What all of this aims to say is that Amsterdam is the perfect city in which to spend a lifetime or just a few days. The food is incredible, the people are lovely, and the city is designed for rambling.