Amsterdam Part II (mostly about pancakes)

Caulils is a fantastic "delicatessen" that was down the street from our apartment (Haarlemerstraat 115). For an early lunch/late breakfast, while someone was still snoozing, I picked up an assortment of meats and cheeses from Caulils as well as an unremarkable baguette from the Albert Hein. I also bought a couple bottles of the house label AH beer that might have cost 20 Euro cents but we didn't get a chance to drink them. We alternated between yummy bites of Jamon Serrano Reserva, a fennel salami called Finnochiona, chorizo Pamplona and a wonderful organic Gouda called Wilde Weide. The next morning, the leftovers were turned into a sandwich that was a great alternative to dreadful, overpriced airport food.


After a fruitless search the night before, we finally found Japanese Pancake World (2e Egelantiersdwarsstraat 24a). The restaurant was a lot smaller than I had imagined. It was a bi-level space with a few tables downstairs and a couple stools upstairs at the grill.


Okonomiyakis in progress.


Dan ordered the o7 Shogayaki special with beef, spinach and onion, Osaka-style. The bonito shavings sprinkled on top are charmingly referred to as "dancing fish flakes."


I ordered a Hiroshima-style Butama, which came with pork, cheese and mushrooms, in addition to the noodles which are standard in this type of okonomiyaki, and one of the main differences from the Osaka-style.

After pancakes part 1, we weathered the line for the nearby Anne Frank Haus. We had been gauging the line our entire stay in Amsterdam and it never appeared to get shorter (except for once at 7:30PM when we walked past and there was no line). It was very cold outside. When we were finished with the tour, we were greeted with snow. We started walking back to the apartment but as we passed The Pancake Bakery (Prinsengracht 191), Dan decided we needed to end our trip with more pancakes.


This was the traditional style with cheese and green apples. Rod Stewart was playing on the hi-fi and if you watch the movie above, you'll notice Dan rocking out to our favorite bocce namesake.


I opted for the poffertjes - mini pillowy pancakes with lemon and syrup, blanketed with powdered sugar. These were soooo good. They were so chewy and delicious and not heavy at all like pancakes can sometimes be.

Amsterdam Part I

On our first night in Amsterdam, we ate at the very cozy Eetcafe Rosereijn (Haarlemmerdijk 52) just down the street from the apartment we rented. We shared the beef stew special and a mozzarella, tomato and pesto salad.


We also drank many little glasses of Jupiler.


The most delicious frites with deliciously unctuous frits saus (aka delicious Dutch mayo) from Cafe Stevens Nieuwmarkt B.V. (Koningsstraat 3hs). I had a couple Palms and Dan also had a mint tea that was made by pouring hot water over a bunch of mint leaves. It was nice and refreshing. Did I mention it was snowing? What started off as a whipping rain, turned into a really beautiful snow of large flakes.


Tampopo (Haarlemmerdijk 168) is a stylish Asian specialty food shop, also located down our street. It looked great, but smelled kinda funky. I didn't appreciate the can of kimchi being lumped in the Japanese section but other than that, it's hard to not love a store named for a movie about the pursuit of a perfect bowl of ramen.


Ok, so we had some special baked treats at went to the Van Gogh museum. Afterwards I tried to lead us to Japanese Pancake World, but as my cognitive functions were still failing me, we wound up getting lost in the tiny streets of the Jordaan neighborhood. Eventually, we got back to the area we were staying in and we were starving. De Vries (Haarlemmerijk 1o8A was right across the street and we stumbled in. We ordered steak sandwiches and I, not realizing our sandwiches came with salads, also ordered a salad. Then Dan thought he saw nachos on the table across the way, so we asked for that. Moments later Dan realized the the nachos were not nachos, but in fact a floral centerpiece. But it turns out that De Vries does serve nachos and they were awful. They were made with paprika flavored Doritos. The food took forever to come out and because the meat was thrown on the grill in a lump half of it was cooked and the other half was raw.