Restaurant

New York: The Mermaid Inn

My friend took me to the Mermaid Inn last Tuesday and I was already excited because of the name! Between 5 PM and 7 PM, it’s happy hour which means the oysters will be sold for 1 dollar each! Look at the pictures and stop by there whenever you’re near!

The staff was friendly, the vibe was good and the food was nice. You’ll get chocolate pudding after your dinner from the restaurant. With the bill they will give you a fortune teller fish which predicts your mood. Sitting outside and watching people during the oysters is a must!

A sneak peek of the menu:

Maenaam Thai Restaurant

When it comes to food it´s definitely something my boyfriend and I always agree on, we love Asian cuisine! Thai food is nice and it seems difficult to really mess these dishes up! I never had bad experiences with Thai food, so I had good expectations when we were trying a new restaurant called Maenaam Thai in Amsterdam. This restaurant is located at the Spuistraat, which is 2 minutes walking from the famous Dam Square. It’s also 5 minutes walking from the restaurant to Central Station. So this was an ideal place to grab food before we had to catch our train for a 2 hour ride to see my parents 🙂 Little detail: Maenaam ( แม่น้ำ ) means river in Thai.

A few pictures of our dinner:

Tom Kha Koeng

In my opinion there’s no other soup that can compete with Thom Kha Koeng. This is because I prefer soups with a coconut milk base. This soup contains coconut milk, prawns, mushrooms and coriander.

Plaa Shoe Shie

Fried fish in a red curry sauce with coconut milk and sweet Thai basil. The fish was fried pangasius fillet, normally we prefer other fish than pangasius, but this main course with white rise was tasting ok.

Phad Thai Kai

Pad Thai are typical Thai fried rice noodles. I took the pad thai with vegetables, egg, tauge and chicken. I like taking Phad Thai as a side order next to white rice.

The dish I liked most was the Tom Kha Koeng. This soup was delicious and I can recommend this as a starter. The menu is not expensive, average as other Thai restaurants I know. Starters are around 5-7 euro’s and main courses are around 14-18 euro’s. I have seen lots of vegetables sculptured into various animals like swans of flowers. But I’ve never seen an onion carved into a flower as a decoration on a plate. I found this quitte original 🙂 There are no desserts on the menu, but we had 2 scoops of vanilla icecream with almonds and whipped cream. Staff is friendly and mostly English speaking.

Kop van Jut

We had a high tea at the “Kop van Jut”-restaurant. It literally means “the head of Jut”. De Kop van Jut is located at the popular and touristic Leidseplein. To be honest, I usually don’t go to the restaurants in touristic places, because the quality is usually bad. But the Dutch restaurants in the Leidseplein are actually quite good. De Kop van Jut is one of these typical Dutch restaurants. It is small, the interior is brown and sober. What makes it not typical Dutch is the service, because they have nice and helpful personnel.

The high tea normally costs 17, 50 euro’s, so it is quite a good price. The time is from 2:30 pm to 5 pm. For this price you get a lot of tea in cute tea pots and tea cups and a wide variety of tea, goat cheese croquette from grandma Bob, roasted tomato and paprika soup, quiche, scones with fruitjam and clotted cream, banana bread, cream puffs, chocolate nut cake and buttercream cookies.

My opinion:

You get enough bites for the price. All the food was vegetarian, so there was no hassel with people who didn’t eat meat or a specific kind of meat. I liked the tomato paprika soup, but because it was served together with the rest of the food it was already cold when i drank it. The goat cheese croquette is original as i don’t see that often in high tea’s. The quiche was very tasteful. The scones and banana bread were fine.

Overall:

The location of the restaurant is great and is has a typical Dutch vibe without the typical Dutch service. Even though, our reservation was only until 5 pm, they didn’t throw us out. The Dutch menu looked nice though we haven’t tried it. The high tea is affordable and good for the price. Downfall is that it some of the food were not home made. This restaurant is good for a nice diner with Dutch food or a quick high tea with friends.

U6

The ‘Utrechtsestraat’ is a street in Amsterdam with nice boutiques and restaurants. It’s near the well known Rembrandt Square, the second city area where the nightlife happens. U6 is a cozy restaurant with a French and International Cuisine. Because it’s near the Rembrandt Square, the restaurant is quite findable for tourists. The staff is from different international backgrounds like Spain and Turkey. There is a regular menu, but also the famous chef’s 3 Course Menu. This menu costs € 22,50.

If you choose a 3 Course Menu, there are various choices of vegetarian, meat and fish dishes. For the starter we choose the puff pastry with chopped salmon, onions and lettuce. The puff pastry dough was very light and crispy which matched with the salmon pretty well.

Here are 3 options for the main course:

Sweet sour noodles with shrimp and broccoli

Nile perch with Parma ham and mashed potatoes

Pork medallions with mushroom sauce

And here are some desserts!

Crème brûlée

Strawberry Cheesecake

Red fruits lattice pie

What we thought about U6: The location is ideal because it’s in the center. Whether you finished your shopping spree in Amsterdam or going to a club after dinner and drinks, the restaurant is close to pretty much everything you need. The noodles main course were not our favorite because the sauce was a bit too sweet. The other dishes were really nice, especially the nile perch with creamy mashed potatoes. The staff were warm, friendly and patient. Last but not least 22,50 EUR for 3 courses is not expensive at all!

Little Buddha Restaurant and Lounge

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I went to eat at Little Buddha this weekend. Little Buddha is an Asian fusion Restaurant and Lounge located in the touristic party hotspot Leidseplein.

We had the All-you-can-eat buffet. You can choose out of 2 soups, 2 sushi plates with either containing 10 sushi’s, the fish of the day, orange chicken, Mongolian beef, egg rolls, steamed rice, noodles and mixed vegetables. My first order was the egg rolls served with sweet chili sauce and the fish of the day, which was cod. The egg rolls were okay, not good because it contained coriander, which does not resemble the authentic Asian egg roll recipe. The cod was tender and the sauce spicy. For my second course, I ordered the Nigiri and Maki rolls platter. These tasted very good and the fish was fresh. Afterwards, I had the orange chicken with the noodles and coconut soup. The orange chicken tasted very good. It is actually my favorite at Little Buddha. I even make it at home sometimes. It’s very delicious and easy to make. The noodles tasted good. For dessert, I had the pineapple cheesecake. I could not taste the pineapple; nevertheless it was a great ending of a fun meal.

Dining at Little Buddha is a nice experience. The decoration is beautiful, the music not loud and relaxing. Does it have the best food in town? Probably not. It is a good place to have some cocktails (cost around 13 euros) with friends before going out or a small gathering or just making beautiful pictures. The one weak spot of Little Buddha is the service. Though the waiters and waitresses were very friendly, but sometimes our orders were given twice and do not expect to get out quickly as it took us 15 minutes to get our bill and another 15 to get our money back.

Overall, it was a nice experience. Definitely worth seeing in Amsterdam.