Blauw

Rijsttafel. One of our "must-have" meals in Amsterdam. The word translates to "rice table" and consists of a number of dishes in small portions served with rice.


We decided to go to Blauw for rijsttafel, partly because we were sure it would be open on a Sunday. We had read about how it was a tasty place for a more modern rijsttafel and thought it would be a good place for our first one.

We had never had a full rijsttafel meal before and were really looking forward to it. There's only one Indonesian restaurant in our area and we had some small assortment dinners before, but a full rijsttafel was new to us. We knew the Netherlands was known for their Indonesian food (generally and rijsttafel in particular), so we had to try it!

The restaurant was away from the main tourist areas which was nice because it allowed us to see more of Amsterdam. We took the tram and then walked along the bottom of Vondelpark before arriving at the restaurant. (We suppose they need to advertise that they are airconditioned? We never quite figured out why.)


We started out with iced tea. Sparkling lemon iced tea seems to be the way people like their iced tea in Amsterdam.


Next, they gave us free shrimp chips with 2 sauces (sambal?). It's like chips and salsa, Indonesian style. Did we mention our love for shrimp chips?

(A brief note about the menus: they were nicely designed and came with mini book lights to help you read! How awesome!)


The rijsttafel came with 2 kinds of rice - plain white rice (not pictured) and a fried rice with egg and vegetables.


The first rijsttafel dishes that came were the ones that didn't have to be put on the heater on the table:


Then we got the 6 meat dishes that had to be on the heater:



The rijsttafel came with the following dishes (translating the best that we can with a wikipedia guide and google translate - if any of the translations are wrong, please tell us!):

• Ikan blauw (some kind of fish dish)
• Ikan blado (a different fish dish)
• Daging pedas (spicy beef)
• Daging koenjit (tumeric beef)
• Babi ketjap (pork belly in sweet soy sauce)
• Sate ayam (chicken satay)
• Sate kambing (goat satay)
• Sajoer lodeh (spicy vegetable stew in coconut milk)
• Gado gado (vegetables in peanut sauce)
• Prekedel (meat and potato patties)
• Sambal goreng telor (fried eggs?)
• Sambal goreng kentang (fried potato sambal)
• Tahoe ketoprak (tofu with vegetables)
• Atjar ketimun (cucumber salad)
• Pisang goreng (banana fritters)
• Seroendeng (coconut and peanuts)
• Kropoek (shrimp crackers)

Then for dessert we got es ketan hitam, black rice pudding with pandan ice cream and coconut milk:


The plate looked so pretty!

It was a very successful first rijsttafel experience. We loved the variety and complexity of the flavors of all of the dishes and wanted to try more. It's too hard to choose a favorite dish out of the medley of dishes, but it was a delicious feast!