Marco, Roger and I went to Five K Comfort Food in The Hague’s city centre on the Gedempte Gracht. Its speciality is Asian fusion. Roger also likes it because they have ice cream floats… a bit of a sweet tooth, that one!
Although my blog post title promises chicken, unfortunately I don’t have photos of that. My apologies. But I take a photo of the graffiti at the table next to us before another group sat there:
I had the orange popcorn chicken. It was really good, and it was a great portion size (bordering on too much for one person). If we hadn’t been going to a movie after, I definitely would have asked for a doggy bag and taken the rest home. Marco and Roger had a few different types of chicken wings plus they shared a platter of duck pancakes.
A few weeks back Marco and I walked through the Paleistuin while waiting for a dinner reservation at Niko, a Japanese restaurant. I took a photo of some of the flowers at the Paleistuin (=Palace Garden).
It was a just a bit of colour to break through all of the green. I think it is a bit too late in the year to see lots of different colors at these gardens, unfortunately.
Here is a look at some of the food we had at Niko:
Above is a salmon dish – and my favorite photo.
Above is an eel dish. I am not the biggest fan of eel, but in small quantities it’s fine. The cucumber underneath was de-li-cious, though, after soaking in that awesome sauce.
Above is a beef tartare dish. I don’t like anything with egg that still looks like egg (cooked or uncooked), but once someone else stirs it in I’m fine with it. It was pretty tasty, actually.
Yesterday was our 10 year anniversary. Sometimes we go for a swanky hotel, like the executive suite in Amersfoort, or the awesome views from the nhow hotel in Rotterdam, or the Kurhaus hotel in nearby Scheveningen during corona. This time I went with a nice restaurant since we already have vacation plans later in the year.
I booked a reservation at Blue Blood in The Hague as a surprise for Marco (he didn’t know where we were going until we were there). The restaurant offers “a mash-up of the Peruvian and Japanese cuisine”. I had read good things about both the food and service at this restaurant and they did not disappoint. When booking the reservation I was asked if this was for a special occasion. I of course clicked on anniversary. When we arrived we saw they had given us a table in the corner next to the canal, with rose petals on the table and a glass of cava (on the house) to toast the occasion.
I knew in advance that I wanted the tasting menu. It started off with oysters. The first oyster I have had in my life. It did not disappoint!
The sauce was yuzu sauce, which gave it a lovely sour taste, with Peruvian corn and lots of other goodies inside.
Another plus point: as each course arrived the staff took the time to explain what each component was, what the ingredients were and why it was on the menu. Unfortunately my memory isn’t good enough to remember most of it, but it was lovely to hear what the inspiration was behind everything.
Marco and I decided to visit Umami, a Chinese restaurant in the city centre. We had looked at the menu a few years ago, but it seems like they have added a street food option since then. The only unexpected thing was that even though we were able to make a reservation for 15:00, when we got their the hostess seemed surprised and said that the kitchen closes between 15:30-16:00. (Why does the website let you make reservations for that time slot then?)
But in the end it wasn’t really a problem as Marco and I had stared at the menu in advance and had a general sense of what we wanted to sample already. The only difference was that we ordered everything at once, whereas we were hoping to order a bit, see how full we were, and then order a bit more if needed.
The snack attack platter, comprised mostly of croquette/bitterballen type snacks, plus 4 spring rolls. The croquettes are filled with meat paste or ragu. The quality of these snacks can differ greatly based on the restaurant you are at, but luckily upscale dining restaurants use high quality meat. In this case the croquettes were green curry, chicken satay, shrimp, duck and rendang. But as they say you also eat with your eyes – the photo above just begs to be eaten (and to be photographed).
Above are two bao buns. In the foreground is chicken thigh and in the background is beef. A bit messy (especially the beef which leaked everywhere) but still quite tasty.
And finally, sandwiches. In the foreground, chicken thigh and in the background duck. We actually only had a half each, taking the other half home for later.
It was a great experience. We do plan on going back to sample some other stuff later (and perhaps the actual lunch or dinner menu, versus the street food menu). If you like good food that is Instagram worthy than this is the place for you.
Marco, Roger and I decided to have lunch by Little V over the weekend. Little V is a Vietnamese restaurant in The Hague’s city centre. Thanks to corona we’ve only had takeout once, a temporary option they put in place when restaurants were forced to close last year. I forgot how much I missed the food!
Little V is well known for their cocktails, both alcohol and, in this case, non-alcoholic. Marco had a “spiced lemon and rose”, a spicy lemonade with rose petals, red peppers and spices. Roger had a “ginger breeze”, with fresh ginger, lychee juice and jasmine tea. I had a “Little T Mix”, a mix of ginger, lemongrass and jasmine tea. Yum.
Some of our appetizers were fish cakes (on the left) and chicken spring rolls (on the right). We were pleasantly surprised that even though the menu says that some items are two pieces, you can ask for three. No sharing necessary!
And our lunches (which sort of replaced our dinners as well). I had a delicious, delicious, delicious bánh mì sandwich with chicken. It was spicy, packed with red peppers, but also sour, packed with pickled vegetables. It really hit the spot – I am a huge fan of spicy sourness. The Vietnamese bread itself was also perfect. As usual, my only alternation was removing some of the coriander stems (but keeping the coriander leaves themselves).
Roger’s dish on the left was Bun Bo Xao, with beef tenderloin, while Marco had Bun Heo, with roasted pork belly. Both also received rave reviews from the boys.
I am drooling a bit thinking about the next time I can order that sandwich again. Good stuff!
During our visit to the Mall of the Netherlands last Friday, Marco and I stopped at Wagamama for a late lunch. (We refer to it as Wagamama’s for whatever reason, but technically the name isn’t possessive.) Wagamama is Japanese for “disobedient” or “willful”. The restaurant usually translates it as “naughty child”. The first restaurant opened in 1992 in London.
It is styled after the quick tempo of Japanese ramen eateries where you get in, get your food and get out. The eateries are usually pretty small so it is considered rude to take the seat for too long. At Wagamama this usually translates in everyone’s food arriving as soon as it is ready, rather than the entire table getting served at the same time. They always mention this beforehand, though. We didn’t get that speech or get our food separately this time, for whatever reason. Maybe they were done at similar times anyway.
As silly as it might sound, my favorite memory was of the Wagamama in Boston, where after the meal Marco and Roger ordered desserts and coffee. I saw on the menu that the tea was actually free (!) back then, so I ordered that. I think it was just a simple green tea. It arrived in this cute little cup and the warm tea really hit the spot.
Above is the dish I chose: firecracker curry. As the name suggests, it is spicy. The sauce underneath does have a sweet kick to it, though. This time I didn’t think it was overly spicy, although I did avoid eating the dried red peppers (but I did eat all of the fresh ones!). The first time I had it I guarded every drop of water like it was the most precious thing on earth. I do miss the curry I used to have at Wagamama, though. Surendra’s curry (home recipe from mob kitchen.co.uk).
Marco’s yaki soba teppanyaki. Teppanyaki is a noodle dish where the noodles and vegetables are baked on a flat pan, with everything turned quickly enough that the noodles stay soft but the vegetables turn crispy. His was with chicken and shrimp. The red bit on top is fresh ginger, which is always heavenly.
I am not a huge fan of noodles which can limit the choices of meals I would order at Wagamama. But everything always looks so tasty!
On Sunday Marco and I spontaneously booked a reservation for FOAM restaurant here in The Hague. That’s the same restaurant where we get FOAM at home meals on Fridays. I had resisted making an appointment earlier in the week as it was forecasted to rain, but the sun was out in full force Sunday morning so I said we should give it a try. We got a seat on the terrace outside at the front of the restaurant. (Here in the Netherlands you are currently only allowed to eat outside on a restaurant terrace, not inside the restaurant.)
Of course even with beautiful blue skies we managed to get a short burst of rain twice. We looked up and realized there was a tiny grey cloud amidst a sea of blue and white. It was pretty strange. Luckily everything was dry again after a few minutes.
I just loved the ‘this table is reserved’ spoon so I had to take a picture of that:
I decided to have a flatbread with white bean hummus, parsley pesto, red cabbage, eggplant and more. Here is a look before I snapped up the last bite:
And Marco had a ‘no queso quesadilla’ with black beans, sweet potato and a spicy tomato jam:
I do think that might be the next thing I try on the lunch menu. The next time the sun decides to show itself!
It has been a while, but Himalayan is open again! Himalayan is an Indian / Nepalese / Bhutanese restaurant in The Hague’s city centre. We admittedly don’t go there often enough, considering how tasty the samosas are. We noticed that there were on Thuisbezorgd (literally = “Home delivery”) so we picked some up late last year. Unfortunately right after that there was a small fire in the kitchen which meant they were closed for the last few months for remodeling (article at regio15.nl in Dutch). So no samosas for us for a few months…
Luckily I noticed last week that they were opening again, so I quickly told Roger and Marco that we were going to get that for our Saturday meal. And it did not disappoint! I don’t have any photos of the food (dal curry for me, lamb vindaloo for Marco, chicken tikka for Roger) because it was too delicious to wait and take photos. Or maybe I forgot in my excitement of digging into the samosas…
But I do have photos of the new interior:
And another photo:
The restaurant is a bit on the small side, which isn’t helpful in these corona times – they already had to get rid of some tables to adhere to the 1.5 meters rule. Also they are down to just the owner and the wife; the owner does all of the cooking at this point. So since they are open again I need to try and remember to order from them more often. The food is definitely worth it!
If you answered “both”, why not try the new restaurant in The Hague’s city centre? Sushimex (indebuurt.nl, in Dutch) opened last month on the Korte Poten. The menu at thuisbezorgd.nl (in English) lists poké bowls, temaki, burritos, nachos, spring rolls, mozzarella sticks… it’s so crazy that I might just be interested.
The Dutch ministry of health has released their vacation plan:
Life in the Hague 