Ishii and Tanuki, Amstelveen

Selma Restaurants Amstelveen, japanese, Lunch, noodles, sushi 0 Comments

My friend works in Amstelveen and when we met up for lunch he surprised me by taking me to a Japanese restaurant. In fact there were several to choose from, right next to each other, specializing in different things. I said, “Well which one is good?” And he said, “They all are.” Huh? Why so many Japanese in Amstelveen? The answer is of course business. Apparently there are a couple of thousand Japanese people living in Amstelveen, which is basically a rich suburb of Amsterdam. This influx of Japanese business people and their families means that, fortunately for us, Japanese food was brought over as well. We had lunch twice in the past month and visited Ishii the first time, and Tanuki the second time. (more…)

Nov 1, 2014

Japanese cuisine Yama, Rotterdam

Pano Restaurants japanese, Rotterdam, sushi 0 Comments

Little over a year ago I attended the umami event at the Rotterdam World food festival, where professor Ole G. Mouritsen gave a presentation about umami, complemented with food prepared by chef Pepijn Schmeink (at the time chef/owner at Eendracht, now at Dertien) and chef Yamamoto or Yama for short. We had some interesting dishes at the hands of the chefs, but one dish in particular really blew my mind: chef Yama’s sushi. Perfectly balanced flavours and textures. Hands down the best I’d ever had.
So, when I heard that chef Yama was opening his own place I knew we had to go. In fact, we actually went the very first day the restaurant was opened in February, and have returned many times since. (more…)