Hup! Hup! Holland! - Apr 2012

So what do you know about the writer of this blog? Other than the fact I eat out more than I should? Well I've proved that I'm ready and willing to make crass generalisations to fit a tortuous analogy, I patronisingly avoid anything that could be construed as populist or mainstream while overanalysing and overplanning in order to fit food around most everything I do. Most of the time...

Those of you who recognise this would therefore have been slightly surprised to see me and the long suffering Dr Vole tramping round the backstreets of Amsterdam's tourist heart desperately searching for something to eat. God knows what had happened but we had no plans made, no achingly cool destination restaurant in mind and not even a concept of what constituted 'authentic' Dutch food.

We didn't eat particularly well in Amsterdam. Not because it's impossible to do so, though even fanatical locals recognise it's not easy, mainly because we took little advice, did little research and remembered even less of either... On the upside, our weekend trip didn't feel like a long meal punctuated by the occasional walk. It certainly wasn't a loss as we wandered alongside picturesque canals, stopped off in little bars and grazed on books, bieres and bitteballen.

On the downside, we spent our second night in a touristic pub attempting to choose between more of those ubiquitous bitteballen (small balls of curried mashed potato - eaten, regurgitated and deepfried) and plates of florescent nachos before giving up and getting stocious instead, ending up on a bar hop round De Pjip, the Dutch version of Shoreditch (much cleaner, with less drugs and skinny jeans, though still an annoying propensity for bad facial hair and bad 80's music). This culminated in a heavenly cone of patatje oorlog, or 'war chips', fries slathered in satay, mayonnaise and raw onion. Admittedly it's better than it sounds, and almost certainly improved by too many vaasje's of local beer.

 So what can I tell you if you're going there to eat? Not much of use I'm afraid. The usual city rules apply. Anything within two blocks of a tourist attraction and you're going to struggle, anywhere with a 'menu tourist' outside and you deserve what you get. There were some nice looking places along Ferdinand Bolstraat and round the periphery of the nearby Sarphatipark in De Pjip. It's not too touristy round there, and is only a few stops from central Amsterdam. There are a few places that obviously feature in the Time Out guide, Kingfisher particularly was full of Brits, but like the rest of the street felt friendly, down to earth and comfortable. If you're there during the day then there's yet more fried to be had along the Albert Cuyp Markt, it's more Brixton than Portobello Road but interesting enough. There's also a slightly more food focussed market in the Jordaan surrounded by slightly more genteel streets of chocolate box architecture and little brown bars.

It's a beautiful city, and one I'll definitely go back to, if not necessarily for the food...