Taberna Dushi is another restaurant on the ever-popular Pannekoekstraat in Rotterdam. It serves up a unique mix of Caribbean and Mediterranean cuisine and is run by a couple – the husband is in the kitchen and the wife provides the service with a smile. They have a small menu with 14-16 small dishes or so and it is a tapas concept, so you order a bunch of things and share. This makes it a great place for casual dining with groups of people. The prices and the service are very friendly and the food is tasty, so we’ve been here many times in the past years. This time around I went with 5 friends and, as I frequently do, ordered too much food. (more…)
DiningCity, an online restaurant guide, organizes “Dining with the Stars” – a two week special event where you can eat at Michelin star restaurants for a reasonable price. You pay €59,50 for five courses at a 1 star restaurant, and add a €15 supplement per extra star at other restaurants. I think they organize this twice a year and we usually try to go at least once during those two weeks. This time we chose Fred, where we had been last year when it had only 1 star, but it now has 2 stars, so we were curious what the difference (read: improvement) would be. (more…)
We had heard about Eetlokaal Kuiter for quite a while and were excited to finally try it. An unpretentious restaurant in the west of Rotterdam with an open kitchen and a staff of only four – one in the kitchen, two serving, and one in clean up. They serve a three-course menu for 32 euros with four items to choose from for each course. It’s French bistro type of cooking with local sourced products. Pure, simple and flavorful food without unnecessary frills and not unimportant, the portions are quite generous, so you will not go home hungry. (more…)
We spent our second night in Frýdek-Místek at Staročeská bašta, a Czech cuisine restaurant. It also had pizza, burgers and buffalo wings, but for the most part, authentic Czech food. Czech cuisine is very meat-based, and in particular pork is abundant. Do not order fish in this country! The meals are the kind that will sustain you through a long winter, so heavy and with lots of carbs. A staple is the dumpling (knedlíky), which is wheat or potato based. The wheat ones are steamed and then sliced like bread, and have a strong resemblance to the Chinese mantau (steamed bun). So perusing the menu I was looking for something with pork and dumplings… (more…)
This is my fourth and final work visit to Frýdek-Místek in the past six months. Wondering where that is? It is a tiny town in the Czech Republic, population 60,000, and perhaps 30 minutes from Ostrava. It used to be two independent towns, Frýdek and Místek, divided by the Ostravice River. But then the prince of Frýdek fell in love with the princess of Místek and they united the two towns. That is obviously a blatant lie, but it makes for a better story than the truth, which is that the Nazis forced the towns to merge during the occupation in WWII. Enough of the history lesson, because this is where it gets weird. There are a lot of Koreans in this town. In a big city this would, of course, not be weird. But this is Frýdek-Místek! The very first time I travelled here I immediately noticed the large amount of Korean men on the flight. What are they doing here, I wondered. Turns out the answer was simple, there’s a Hyundai factory nearby. And then came the gem: where there are Koreans, there are Korean restaurants. So I go to Restaurant Benu every time I’m here. Last night my predictability in food choice was proven when a colleague that lives here decided to try to find us without calling and here was his reasoning process: they’re out for dinner. There’s two likely places, the Irish pub or the Korean. Selma is with them. They are at the Korean. (more…)
On the Pannekoekstraat sits a tiny Chinese restaurant called Beijing Bao (formerly Eethuis Bij Bao). We’ve been there every week for the past four weeks, and it is hands down, my favorite Chinese restaurant in Rotterdam. It’s Beijing style Chinese with a heavy Szechuan influence, so if you can’t handle heat, be careful what you order! They indicate heat level with peppers (zero to three). (more…)
