Jordaan Amsterdam Cafes and Cheese

Bikes on bridge: Runstraat Amsterdam

Jordaan is one of my favorite neighborhoods in Amsterdam and I spent a recent Thursday afternoon walking around there enjoying the city. I started by walking down Runstraat.

I was looking for a simple lunch so I stopped in at De Kaaskamer, which was offering a daily baguette for 5 Euros, why not? It was a local ham and soft goat cheese served on half a dark baguette. De Kaaskamer is one of those really great cheese shops where they sell hundreds of cheeses and the staff know everything about the different cheeses so they can point you in the right direction. The sandwich was great.

At De Kaaskamer cheese shop Amsterdam

I returned to the shop later in the afternoon to buy cheese to bring home. Then I realized you really need their expertise to help choose. After tasting several I decided on two. Here's how they are described on their labels: 

"'Brokkel de Brokkel' so do break off a piece of this very, very old cheese - impossible to cut with a cheese slicer. Invite some friends, open a bottle full bodied wine and enjoy this strong but sweet speciality. Break-a-breaker!"

"Deurninger Speciaal van het landgoed Kaamps - Special Dutch cheese made by farmer Herbert Nijland on his farm in the village of Deurningen near Hengelo. the cheese is treated with an Austrian mountain fungus. Special flavour!"

I'm looking forward to a Dutch cheese-tasting evening at home!

Then on to the Cafe de Pels just down the street, a cafe we visited before. Very nice coffee, newspapers, darkish interior, and totally comfortable.

Restaurant 't Stuivertje in Jordaan District Amsterdam

More walking, I was happy to find the great restaurant called t' Stuivertje on Hazenstraat 56 that we enjoyed so much last time we visited Amsterdam. I was glad to see it was still in business. Here's my review of Bistro 't Stuivertje from last time. I also found a very nice looking pizza place called pazzi (see my review) and a cool looking cafe, but to be honest, there seem like a million cool looking cafes in Amsterdam and especially in the Jordaan (maybe that's why I like it?).

Amsterdam canal in winter

After walking around a little more it was happy hour, as my mother likes to say, and so I stopped in at a nice cafe at the corner of Elandsgracht and Prinsengracht overlooking the canal. I had a nice Heinekein beer and enjoyed the sun setting in the windows across the canal.

Looking out from Jordaan cafe

All my Jordaan photos on Flickr.

Beer and Pizza in Amsterdam

Partial list of the Dutch draft beer available at 't Arendsnest

Beer and pizza are two of my favorite things. After a full day attending the Social Cities of Tomorrow conference in Amsterdam, I took a leisurely walk back to my hotel through the Jordaan district of the city.

IPA type beer at 't Arendsnest

I was lucky to find the 't Arendsnest beer bar which serves "Dutch beer only!" from seemingly most of the beer brewers in The Netherlands (although I did not notice any Heineken there?). They have 30 or so beers on tap and over 100 in bottles including a selection of Dutch abbey beers. I didn't realize that The Netherlands also had abby breweries (they are not all in Belgium).

I tasted two pilsner type beers and an India Pale Ale, all three were draft. All three were really good, very hoppy and clean tasting. They have a beer sampler for 7.50 Euros for three 12cl tastes, but I ordered normal size 25cl glasses and wound up paying 10 Euros with tip. Both bar tenders were fluent in English and happy to guide me to the right beers. They have some 'bar food' and many of the locals shared cheese plates, but the food did not seem to be the main point here! They also have tastings and things so it would be worth checking he website to learn if something interesting is going on when you visit.

After my beer I remembered walking by what looked like a great pizza place the day before: it had a wood burning oven, only served pizza and advertised "Italian slow food". So I decided to try and find it again. I retraced my steps, found the right canal (Prinsengracht), turned down the Elandsgracht (Jordaan Park), left on 1ste Looiersdwarsstraat walked to number 4 and Pazzi was open with room at the bench they have for people who want to eat their pizza in the shop.

Blackboard menu at Pazzi Italian slow food Amsterdam

I ordered a Margarita, the pizza I use to compare pizzerias, and sat down to wait. About 3 minutes later I was served a great pizza: crisp thin crust, tart sauce, good amount of buffalo milk mozzarella cheese. By this time I was sharing the bench with a couple women who were splitting a quatro formaggio (served here with rucola) and two guys on my right who had both ordered Piccante pizzas. Apparently the Piccante pizzas were not spicy enough for the guys and they asked me to pass the hot pepper olive oil (that's when I asked them what kind of pizza they had since it was not entirely clear by looking).

Piccante pizza at Pazzi Italian slow food Amsterdam

I finished my Margarita and decided to order one of the Piccante pizzas too. After all, when's the next time I will be in Amsterdam. As the guys were leaving they gave me back the hot pepper oil, but told me to be sure to taste the pizza first because it might be spicy enough for me without the oil. The Piccante pizza was also great. It had smoked mozzarella cheese, lots of hot pepper (no need for the hot pepper oil) and herbs. Really fine. (I brought half the pizza home.)

So, a fabulous gourmet evening for me in Amsterdam! All my photos from 't Arendsnest and Pazzi on Flickr. My Amsterdam photos on Flickr.

PICNIC 2011 in Amsterdam

In September I travelled to Amsterdam for the PICNIC 2011 Festival. The event is like a big fair and this year it was held at the old shipbuilding area called NDSM Wharf, a ten-minute ferry ride from Amsterdam's Central Railway Station. A variety of different structures including temporary buildings, old containers, tents, an old ferry boat, were used for the sessions and presentations.

PICNIC was a great opportunity to meet people thinking about the intersection between design, city planning, internet, history, art ... lots of energy and very creative ideas. Among my favorite presentations were those by Adam Greenfield, Ben Hammersley, and Charles Landry (links are to videos of the presentations).



On Friday I attended a session sponsored by the European Creative Business Network. We split up into teams and developed ideas for venture capital funding. Our team of four developed the concept for an on-line game that would be played via mobile devices ... and we won the first prize: 5,000 Euro to develop the idea in more detail! We're working on it.

The photo below is of us taking the ferry back to Central Station after dinner one night, note that it's a roll-on/roll-off ferry for bicycles and mopeds ... extremely convenient and easy to use.

I'm already looking forward to PICNIC 2012! All my PICNIC 2011 Festival photos (many of which are of the Amsterdam Harbour) on flickr.

More Amsterdam, less suburban-dam!

Amsterdam street scene, March 2008


David Brooks, a syndicated columnist from the NY Times, had a column this week titled "I dream of Denver" basically saying that most Americans did not want to live in Amsterdam (i.e. "dense" older cities). Paul Sighley, who writes a blog for the California Planning and Development Report, took issue with Brooks, and believes that the poll upon which Brooks based his column really shows that Americans want options beyond suburban sprawl. He says,

It makes me wonder if we have built enough suburbia to last us for another a generation or two. Maybe, just maybe, we in California should be focused on making cities – whether they be like San Jose or Anaheim – better places to live. Maybe we should make our small towns – whether it’s Chowchilla or Ukiah – complete places to live, learn, work and recreate. And maybe we should pause before we convert our rural places – whether it’s the Salinas Valley or the Sierra foothills – into suburbs.

Most planners are not advocating for an American Amsterdam, and neither am I. I’m only pointing out that not everyone – nowhere near a majority, according to Pew – wants to live in Roseville.

As a former Californian who has moved to one of those old European cities, I can only say I really enjoy the urban lifestyle and hope that California can develop more real urban areas like San Francisco and Los Angeles. Maybe the economic crisis maybe will give us the opportunity to "reset" into a more sustainable and exciting built environment.

Amsterdam Tulip Museum - Retail Entertainment

A couple years ago the idea of "retail entertainment" was quite popular. The idea is that people want to be entertained as part of the shopping experience. The first example I remember was NikeTown but there are lots of others. Most of them are very large stores.

When we visited Amsterdam I was quite surprised to see the retail entertainment concept used in a store that was about as big as our bedroom: the Amsterdam Tulip Museum.

Upstairs was the store, selling flowering bulbs (the manager explained to us that tulip bulbs were out of season in March so they would not sell them) and lots of household goods with a tulip theme (dishtowels, mugs, books, etc.). Downstairs (2 Euros for adults, but they cards in many hotels offering a 1 Euro discount), was the museum.

The museum is very nice, photos and text, plus videos that explain the origin of tulips, the process of harvesting bulbs and my personal favorite a history of the tulip boom in the 1600s. It takes about 15 minutes to go through the museum and it's a very pleasant space.

I was skeptical of visiting the museum but really enjoyed it, the manager was really enthusistic and friendly, and it was quite cool to see how they translated the concept of retail entertainment into a more personal experience than the big corporate shopping centers.

The museum is located quite near the Anne Frank house in the Jordaan section of Amsterdam. If you go there's a great cafe on a canal just behind the museum. It's called Cafe 't Smalle. The two photos below are from the cafe.

Amsterdam: Bistro 't Stuivertje

Everywhere we went in Amsterdam we seemed to eat well, but in totally different styles. On Sunday we ate at the Bistro 't Stuivertje, a real neighborhood restaurant for Amsterdam's Jordaan district. We were also lucky here, we got the last available table, the restaurant was full even on a Sunday night.

We started with a 'Dutch' mustard soup (see photo). It tasted great, the mustard was more subtle than Dijon mustard, but it still was strong and refreshing (if you are like me and love mustard!) and it had very thin slices of apple floating in it which provided just the right contrast. A great dish!

For main courses I had red snapper with a spicy and sweet curry sauce, Christa had sole which was cooked exactly right. Along with the main courses came salad and French fries (there was rice with my snapper and cheese potatoes with the sole along with sauteed vegetables) - I mention this only to excuse myself for not testing the desserts, which looked great at the other tables. Especially interesting was a cinnamon ice cream dessert, but, next time.

Service was great, we spent a long time talking with the chef who was born in Fiji and lived in San Francisco for many years before moving to Amsterdam. The restaurant is in an area that is gentrifying, but they are trying to keep the local tradition as a restaurant for everyone.

No website, here are the details: Bistro 't Stuivertje, Hazenstraat 58, 1016 SR Amsterdam, Tel: 020-623-13-49. Our dinner cost 47 Euros with beer.

Amsterdam: Le Zinc Restaurant

We were really lucky to find Le Zinc in Amsterdam. We were walking by and it looked nice. At first they thought there were no more tables, but, in fact, there was a no-show upstairs, so we were in!

The rooms (upstairs/downstairs) were very nice, flickering candles and space between the tables. The service - like everywhere in Amsterdam - was wonderful ... such nice people.



We both ordered three-course menus with accompanying wine. We started with a special cod fish served in a chicory soup (we liked it so much Christa made chicory soup the first night we were back in Vienna). The cod was broiled and set in a shallow bowl of soup with a wedge of chicory very lightly sauteed (I think). Fantastic.

For a main course we both had a lamb combination; several slices of lamb fillet and long-cooked lamb shoulder pieces formed in a small cylinder, served with Greek pasta that tasted almost like risotto. The Syrah based Rhone wine went perfectly with the dish.



I ordered the cheese course and Christa the dessert, so we could taste both. I asked the waiter to pick a selection of strong local cheeses and he did a great job. The three-year old Gouda crumbled in my mouth and went perfectly with the Port wine. The dessert was also excellent, a lemon ice cream.



The dinner cost 110 Euros with tip. Definitely make reservations!

Amsterdam Sama Sebo Restaurant

Sama Sebo is an Indonesian restaurant located on Hobbemastraat near the Van Gogh Museum. I have always wanted to eat an Indonesian Rice Table dinner and this was certainly a good place to do it. In an Indonesian Rice Table dinner you get rice – in this case one plain steamed rice and one (very lightly) fried rice … then a whole set of side dishes of things you eat with the rice. These include chicken skewers in peanut sauce, fried bananas, chile sauce, vegetables cooked in coconut sauce, stewed pork, and about 25 other foods. The idea is variety of textures and flavours.

Sama Sebo has been in business a long time and it was quite fun. The rooms are small and tightly packed with tables. We had five waiters in our small room and they were a combination between the Marx Brothers and ballet dancers moving between the tables telling jokes and making people feel great. They bring all 29 dishes at once and serve the first part telling you what everything is, then leave the dishes on hot plates (candle-based, which makes a very nice romantic atmosphere) and you serve the rest as you want. They help by removing the dishes that are finished and bringing more drinks and, of course, telling jokes and teasing their fellow waiters. Also, the waiters were dressed in beautiful – all different – Indonesian pattern jackets, it was worth the visit just to see them.



We spent about 80 Euros on rice table for two and four beers. We did not have reservations, but were very lucky to get a table, so reserve in advance.

Amsterdam Restaurants

We had a great time in Amsterdam. The people were very friendly and all of them spoke almost perfect English. We ate in four excellent restaurants. In my travels it has been rare that I have been able to simply walk into so many good restaurants without knowing where I was going. Very impressive. Reviews follow.

Amsterdam Public Transport

I admit that I am spoiled public transport-wise - having lived in Zurich for five years would spoil anyone, but Amsterdam's system has some real problems. For example, on Friday evening about 11 pm, we were waiting with about four other people at a downtown stop for the tram. The frequency is 4x per hour at that time and we had been waiting about 10-minutes. The tram we were waiting for just buzzed-by ... aparently we were supposed to signal or something ...

Another strange thing is that they have conductors in some of the trams who sell tickets. These people were all very nice, but it means that everyone must get on at one set of doors, delaying the trains. I wonder if proof-of-payment would not be more efficient (it's in place on some of the trams).

Also, a bit less of a problem was the guy smoking a joint on the tram we finally caught on Friday night, but ...

Amsterdam

I am in Amsterdam where I will make a presentation at the UIC High Speed Rail Conference.

I am using the free internet at the public library. The Amsterdam public library is a beautiful building on the waterfront ... although to be truthful, most of the city seems like it's on the waterfront, either large bodies of water or small ones (canals). Walking around is fun. Also interesting is that all the houses have beams sticking out of the attic rooms with hooks for pulleys. It looks like they are used to raise bulky things like furniture to the upper floors since the stairways inside are narrow and steep. What was interesting to me is the fact that they are in the new buildings as well as the old ones, maybe just architectural, but they also seem quite useful.

We visited the concert house last night, also on the waterfront, and it's a beautiful building. It has a wonderful restaurant called Star Ferry (named after the famous Hong Kong ferry company) on the water level with huge windows looking out on the harbour and train station. In San Francisco or Zurich such a room would have been totally full, but there was plenty of room (the concerts started later) and it was quiet. The food looked like it would be very good. The fresh mint tea was great.