Beijing Bao, Rotterdam

If I said what I wanted to say, namely that what I ate at Beijing Bao didn’t taste like Chinese food, then you’d probably take me for an idiot. You’d say China is big, China is far away, and as the only Chinese food you’ve probably eaten was eaten in Chinese restaurants, the restaurants not being in China, then you don’t know what Chinese food tastes like.

That would be fair enough.

So perhaps it would be better for me to say that the food at Beijing Bao is not what one would expect to eat at a Chinese restaurant. I mean, not unless you expect cumin in your food and thickets of fresh coriander strewn on top. Not unless it’s no big deal to you that the beef you just put in your mouth has melted before you had time to close it, let alone chew; and not unless you’re the kind of person that would find someone’s asking you to pass the soy sauce some sort of joke. Everyone knows you don’t get soy sauce when you’re eating Beijing Bao’s Chinese.

And you don’t; at least, it doesn’t come standard at the table. Standard there is a small pot of vinegar, Korean style, and a sauce with a chilli-kick. Standard there are green beans barely cooked and heaped in fried, minced pork that will make you think twice about the virtues of eating pop corn because heck, popcorn is greasier than this and this is much more satisfying anyway. Those sauces (you know the ones) that render every dish essentially the same but for their different hues of red? That goopy, black, they-call-it-fish-sauce, I-call-it-MSG stuff that, no matter how hard you try not to, reminds you of the effects of an oil spill? Instead of that stuff, you get vegetables that are still identifiable as, and have the original texture of, vegetables; and if you order right they’ll come with nothing more than chunks of fried garlic that you’ll be able to chopstick-out blindfolded for their size.

No, this kitchen is not afraid of garlic and nor should you be. Not even when you order the beef ribs in garlic which, when we did, turned out to be (or at least seemed to be) pork ribs in a dry-as-dust pancake-batter crust that had been infused with garlic. ‘Dry as dust’ in the case of batter is a compliment, unless you like the not-enough-napkins greasy kind, in which case this is not your sort of Chinese. 

You’ll probably want to order second plate of the Chinese cabbage with pork (kimchi with really tasty, not at all dry pork), but don’t let this put you off ordering another, different cabbage dish. The Chinese cabbage with soy and vinegar was bright and tangy and imparted a joy akin to that you might feel in taking a bite of a well-placed pickle in your sandwich for balance, i.e.: much joy. Order it. Order it and put a little on your plate with a little of everything else (the dishes are large and to be shared), but especially the melt in your mouth beef with cumin (I’m still surprised), shredded onion, coriander and… garlic. With the beef shaven, succulent but dry and spiced with cumin, I suppose this is what Greek gyros would taste like if it were excellent. And this was excellent.

When the ‘Beijing pizza’ arrives (for the restaurant operates strict serve-yourself drinks and it-comes-when-it-comes policies), essentially a larger, absolutely not greasy, dumpling rolled over well-spiced minced lamb and braised leeks, it’s likely you’ll also want to comment on how Middle Eastern the tastes are. Ditto with the steamed eggs - theirs is the same creamy, nuttiness that you’ll find in the 10-hour boiled eggs that perch atop hummus bowls in Israel. From these last two dishes and the beef, it would seem that the two kitchens share similar recipes for soul food. 

And it’s the food that carries the place. With no real decor to speak of, a TV screen in the back loudly slide-showing the dishes, no alcohol licence and staff that aren’t really interested in talking to you, Beijing Bao is the type of place you probably only dared to enter because of the number of Chinese sitting inside, or because a local friend you trust enough to take you to a Chinese restaurant in Rotterdam even though you don’t like ‘Chinese’ and you have to travel from Amsterdam, takes you. However you got there, go there. After dinner you’ll probably want to go again for breakfast.

Photographs by Sophia van den Hoek. Also published on Unfolded.

Worst is the best

I, like the rest of the Boeing 787, was salivating. You know how it goes: you’ve been staring at nothing for 4 hours, maybe less, probably much less, when ‘nothing’ all of a sudden becomes some horrendous film like Mad Max which the (by the looks of it) newly engaged couple sitting in 23 A and B are watching in the seats in front of you, and which you therefore can’t help but also watch. Through the gap.

Ok, so the movies I end up watching through The Gap aren’t generally the ones I’d watch at home, and Mad Max is actually a very bad example because it’s not something I’d watch anywhere; but every once and a while something ok comes along, which, even if not good, is at least something which awakens enough of desire in me to press eject on your controller-cum-telephone thing (has anyone ever seen anyone telephone from an airplane?) and tune in to the beginning.

Which is how I started watching Chef. And how I, probably like all the rest of the people that have watched Chef, became mildly obsessed — ok, no, ‘obsessed’ is too strong a word; let’s say ‘personally involved’ — in the eating of Cuban sandwiches.

And with all good eating comes appreciation. In this case, a staunch appreciation for all the Cuban sandwiches this side of Miami done right. ‘Right’ requiring the frying of both sides of each piece of bread so they’re golden brown, soon to be brown-brown (a commonly known secret is mayonnaise). ‘Right’ requiring the correct amount of hours to have passed the pork shoulder by, first as it’s brined (a full 12 according to some recipes), then as it soaks in marinade (2 should be enough), and the last 3 as it’s slowly roasted. Then there are, of course, the pickles you need to get it right, and to which I dedicate a next-level appreciation all their own; the cheese (‘Swiss Cheese’ — as in the stuff with holes in, not from Switzerland — I know what you’re thinking but just this once, ok? because this is an American thing, not a continental thing, but if it were up to me, I’d use Cheddar), that nuclear-yellow mustard (absolutely no real mustard allowed) and let us not forget the napkins. Obviously a good Cuban sandwich requires many napkins.

So it was a good sign that we had to go through a lot of napkins when we shared our Cuban at Worst. And as bad as it sounds — and, ok, it does sound bad, no one really likes to share — it was, in fact, a good thing that we were sharing. Because then we still had room to for the weissworst with a cauliflower puree and coleslaw (something I rarely trust anyone but my mom to get right but now that group’s been bumped up to two, the second being Worst), and three fully loaded (buckwheat) crepes stretched around chunks of sweet, roasted squash, spinach and cheese. All done, I can tell you, exactly right. 

Photo by Sophia van den Hoek. Also published on Unfolded.

Hakata Senpachi and some stuff about sake

This is drinking food. It’s quick-grab, slurp, suck, re-lick your fingers food. It’s unlikely stuff on a wooden stick (eel, pork belly) and genius (salted, crispy-fried chicken skin, also on a stick) food. It’s so-fresh-you-hardly-taste-the-fish food; and the eel, not the one that came on the stick but the one that came last, the one on the plate, is as fatty as foie gras in terms of other food, food.

This is ‘What’re they eating over there I'd like some of that’-food, and ‘Can I try a bit of yours’-food. It’s ‘You need to try this’-food and ‘Can we have more of that one’-food. It’s lots of ‘What’s this?’-food and, ‘Try combining this with the one over there’-food. All of it’s ‘Way better than when we went to that expensive place’-food. It’s hungover food.

And we drank slow-brew sake that tasted like chocolate. 

Here's some stuff you might like to know about sake:

1. To turn rice into sake, brewers use a yeast called Aspergillus oryzae.
2. In Japanese, the word 'sake' is used to refer to any alcoholic drink. The Japanese call what we call sake nihonshu which means 'Japanese alcohol' . 
3. There are several types. These are differentiated by the manner in which the rice was milled.
4. Milling is to do with the rice polishing ratio, i.e., how much of the outer husk and core of each rice kernel has been ground away. To get to white rice from brown rice, you need to polish it to about 90% (i.e. you polish off 10%).
5. A sake with a higher polish (between 50-70%, so that's 30-50% polished off) is generally more expensive. This is because it requires more rice and processing to make the same amount of liquid.
6. Ginjo and Daiginjo sakes are considered premium sakes. 
7. Junmai is the Japanese word for 'pure rice'. Junmai is brewed using only rice, water, yeast and koji – i.e. there are no other additives. Unless a bottle of sake says 'junmai'  (純米), it will have additives.
8. Some other useful words: amakuchi = sweet, karakuchi = dry, genshu = undiluted sake (most are diluted), honjozo = sake to which a small amount of distilled alcohol has been added,
   jizake = sake from smaller breweries or more artisanal brands.

Oh, and we were at Hakata Senpachi.

Illustration by Briony Crane.

Breda, Amsterdam

It’s the kind of place that makes you wish that you, personally, and the nation, generally, had a deeply rooted lunch culture. Of course that’s only if you don’t already and also if by ‘lunch culture’ you mean more than a broodje kaas, which, even if not one to be admired, is as deep rooted a culture as any. Appropriate or deliberate, then, that the restaurant’s name is Breda, a town in the ‘Bourgondisch’, bistro-friendly, lunch-loving half of the Netherlands. 

But this and the fact that everyone running the place originally comes from there, is probably Restaurant Breda in Amsterdam’s strongest link to Breda, Breda. Not that one cares. Not when one is sitting on a beautiful green couch with one’s wine glass reflecting outside’s high grey skies and you consider, finally out of the wind, what a marvellous thing it is to have a proper lunch. A proper lunch on a Friday afternoon in a proper, high as those grey skies-ceilinged, dining room. One that is elegant (the light fixtures are stunning) without being fussy (you might be out for lunch but this is still Amsterdam) and built around a long bar (important). 

Our reservation was for 1 p.m. but with last night’s not nearly as chic dinner feeling only hours away, we chose for the 3-course menu (€29.50) over the 4 (€36.50) or 5-course (€42.50) options. And that, and the name of the wine in your glass (unfortunately vin naturel only comes by the bottle) is all you are to choose; the object being to settle yourself back down on that couch and enjoy watching the chef, whose other restaurant, Guts & Glory, bases its menus on one animal at a time, exercise his skill and new-found freedom in cooking with all kinds of beasts (fin, feather, shell) at once. 

Mana Mana

There was enough vinegar on the grilled vegetable salad for even me to comment which will only mean something to you if you knew how every salad is a battle between me and the rest of the world, me being on vinegar’s side. But we'll get there.

The last time I’d been to Mana Mana was maybe a year ago, maybe less, I don’t exactly remember. What I do remember is that we’d passed the place when it was still at its previous place (Hemonystraat) a million times and wanted to eat there for another million. It was, however, always shuttered up but for the one time, which is how I knew it was a restaurant to begin with and not the shutters of a person with the good fortune of having their family crest being a big steaming pot (see their logo). I remember being in a very bad mood and going was meant to be both a surprise and to cheer me up. It did. 

When a Hummer isn't even the worst thing

In hindsight maybe I should have taken the black Hummer on the Spigelstraat as a bad omen. But at the time, how’re you meant to know? Maybe it was just an asshole driving a tank up a 17^th century street. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

And then there’s always the chance that the two events were far away enough from each other to be disconnected. After all, it was hours between the Hummer and the first time I felt drippingly guilty about my dinner dying for me. Something entirely different to how I felt butchering a lamb, which shouldn’t be taken the wrong way.

Nonetheless, omen or no omen, you need not wait around for your own. Just don’t eat at Braai.

Abandon all hope ye who enter here

Don’t go hungry.

I thought that after last year, this, at least, would have been obvious. Looking back, I had no reason to try again. It was hell; how Armageddon would look if it started in the Westergasfabriek. Smoke, chaos and writhing bodies surrounded by debris. It could only be worse this time, I thought. I could write about how bad it all was, I thought. I went —

— hungry —

— the state in which you’d think would be appropriate, freshly arrived at a food festival, ready to try all the things you ordinarily wouldn’t because they’re not ordinarily available to you; and here they all are, cheap, interesting and tasty. There you’d go, weaving in and out of all the nicely spaced trucks, couple euros here, a bite there. Just like in winter time when you wonder where all the couples who run the oliebollen (a type of Dutch doughnut) stalls go the rest of the year, you’d wonder where all these people – the people that run the food trucks – go. Maybe they’re the ones that run the Christmas markets. You’d wonder because you only ever see them at festivals, and each time in different combinations. And you just wished one of them would have the peace of soul to open up in bricks and mortar, maybe in noord somewhere, somewhere offbeat. It would just be a small place, somewhere they could keep experimenting with interesting dishes. Because they’d always be cooking different stuff, they’d always be attracting different people. The mix would mean our restaurant friends wouldn’t miss the road too much, they’d have the variety they crave right at home. In a way though, you’d understand if they chose a truck over their own place: it means less infrastructure, more freedom to try what you like, to tweak and change. You only have to buy as much stock as you can fit in your truck so you can try different things until you get it right. And you’ve only got the counter standing in front of you and your customer so, with their feedback, you’d get it right pretty soon. And if you don’t, you can change. No stock, see?

Still hungry.

Who's afraid of natural wine?

Indie lives on but has traded its skinny jeans for an organic vineyard, its Pete Doherty for a lack of sulphates and its guitars for a handpicked harvest. And how refreshing. I’m talking about natural wines being the indie kids of wines: dressed down and talking back.

Where there was pomp and circumstance in the wine world, there’s now humour (just look at their labels: from Quentin Tarintino-esque gore-core, Brutal to Sauvé de la Cisterne with two men cleaning cisterns). Where there was full-bodied, meal-in-a-glass wines, we’re getting acquainted with a bit of bubble and spice. A nose of fruit is being substituted for the smell of something wild: earth, animals and last week’s turning leftovers. We’re learning to drink red wine in the sun on a hot day and we’re beginning to accept red wines that look like rosé and rosé’s that reminds us of lemonade. We’re sucking down minerals instead of butter and wondering how, despite it tasting bubbly, we can’t for the life of us see any bubbles nor, for that matter, see through to the other side of glass.

God would drive a Citroën

It’s a sound owned by the action movies: that of cars screeching around a bend in a covered garage. Not necessarily a sound you’d associate with a night out, much less a great night at a restaurant. But this is the sound, and it was so convincingly out of a movie, that I'm finding I start my stories with.

I found out about Citroën via Rijsel and so considered the place already blessed by the cooking gods that so often seem to look beyond Amsterdam. Another blessing was the lack of PR, website and Facebook page and the rumour that this was the golden child of Hotel de Goudfazant. Fast forward to the night itself and did I mention the screeching cars?

We have nitro brew coffee in Amsterdam, too

The whole of Instagram is talking about spring; so I’m going to start with summer, of jumping off boats, dinners outside and nitro brew coffee. Just another coffee name to show off to your friends? Well, yes if you think a coolly cascading, velvety, Guinness-like drink is not your thing.

Thanks to Adam, co-owner of Lot Sixty One Coffee Roasters, Amsterdam will be able to get in on what the rest of the world’s probably already drinking if they want to look cool. And this summer, it’s nitro brew, coffee beans soaked for 16 hours, the keg, injected with nitrous oxide (70% nitrogen and 30% CO2) and forced out of a tap under a helluva lot of pressure to get that foamy head and creamy taste Guinness has its name all over.

Taste wise, Adam tells me that we can expect the viscosity of an espresso, but no acidity, and smooth, smooth, smooth. The Internet tells me that it’s so creamy, you’d be forgiven for thinking milk was added. So far so good.

And it gets better: Adam has also teamed up with Alphabet Brewing Company, a start-up microbrewery from Manchester, UK for a collaboration – Lot Sixty One Coffee, their beer, name: Crate Digger, a ‘coffee stout’, at 8.3% alcohol. Equally cold. Equally summer.

Lot Sixty One is on the Kinkerstraat 112, Amsterdam. I recommend it. 

Sir Hummus

They tell me they didn’t even announce the opening – just tore down the paper covering the windows, a gesture to their neighbourhood that they were open, that everyone was welcome. Six months later and you can still tune in to those local vibes: you’re sat on a corner, at the window, looking out whilst you scoop up your hummus. And you must look as charming as you feel because the people passing are smiling back.

And you’re smiling too because you have wonderful hummus in front of you, and where, really, can you just go somewhere for a bowl of hummus? And you enjoy the feeling that this is a place to eat really slowly, that it doesn’t matter that you’re alone, no one’s making a gimmick of it, that you’re not alone anyway; not really, because you’re at a neighbourhood place.

Butcher's Tears

The location couldn’t be more unlikely: an old garage in Oud Zuid a few doors down from an ambulance depot. Inside, the place is clinical; bare and tiled white like a butchers. A good time to introduce one of the butchers then (amongst his friends): the brewer at Butcher’s Tears.