Pizza by Certe

I finally made it over to Pizza by Certe for the first time today. I was over on the east side looking for the Korilla truck, but they had already sold out by the time I got there. Pizza by Certe was on the next block, and I decided to try it while I had the opportunity. I had been interested in going for awhile since they are an "environmentally friendly" pizza place but I had never gotten around to it.

There was a guy outside giving out pizza samples. I think the one I got was the chicken sausage pizza. It was really tasty, but I wasn't sure if I was in the mood for pizza. After much deliberation, I decided to go with the chicken parm sandwich.



The sandwich was good. Not as good as some of the sandwiches I've had from the sister restaurant Certe or other chicken parmigiana sandwiches I've had. I think maybe it's because there was a lot less sauce. I like sauce. It was more of a "healthy" sandwich if you could ever call chicken parm healthy. Also, the bread was really flaky/crispy/crunchy (but not hard to bite). It left crumbs all over my desk, but was a nice balance to the inside of the sandwich.

I'm not sure when I'll be going here next, but one reason is that it's kind of a long walk for me (about a mile). But I'm glad I was in the area and had time to stop in. Next time maybe I'll try the pizza. The combinations on the menu sound great and the sample I had was good. Perhaps I should have gone with pizza today, after all it's in the name of the place!

Fall Bounties Pt 2

Pumpkin goodness continues Monday night. M was working late, and we couldn't figure out what to do for dinner. Eventually we decided on Chipotle, and M offered to get it on her way home. I get a phone call seconds after hanging up with her. "Do you want Shake Shack instead? There's no line right now."

See here for what you can't figure out what my answer was.

The burger was good as always, the cheese fries were good as always, and M enjoyed her Second City Bird Dog as always. Today's custard flavor? Pumpkin Pie. Seriously, I love fall so very much.

I Love Fall
The flavor was a lot milder than I was expecting. Good cinnamon and pumpkin spice flavor, but not as sweet. The difference between a less sweet beer vs a less sweet custard is that you'd expect the custard to be sweeter. I like it a lot since I love the pumpkin spice flavor overall, but I was a little disappointed that it was milder in sweetness.

Pumpkin Pie
A's rating: 8.5/10
M's rating: 9/10

Fall Bounties Pt 1

Fall is M's and my favorite season. The weather gets nice and cool, the leaves change colors, and Oktoberfest and fall harvest beers start coming out everywhere.

So Saturday M and I went out for a friend's birthday. We went up to Astoria and met everyone out at Studio Square. It's a beer garden, but they have a large indoor space as well that was quite comfortable. I was quite excited because Studio Square had a full complement of Oktoberfests on tap, and they had Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale. I started out by getting a pitcher of Hofbrau Oktoberfest since I love Oktoberfests, and Hofbrau consistently makes a good one every year.

A big reason I like Hofbrau is because of the sweetness of the caramelized malt. That's one of the defining traits of Oktoberfests, and Hofbrau really just does it well. Throughout the night people got many different pitchers. We went through Sam Adams Coastal Wheat, Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, and Spaten Oktoberfest. Then someone went and got the aforementioned Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale. OH MY GOD. It was like heaven in my mouth.

If you like pumpkin pie, you will love Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale. It's not as sweet as a real pumpkin pie, but you taste all of the spices and flavors found in one, and just a hint of sweetness to finish it off. It's one of the most amazing beers I have ever drank, and I drank a whole lot (probably too much) of it. At some point M convinced me to leave behind my new favorite beer ever and go home. Thinking back on it, that decision was probably the right one. I really didn't need any more. I'll just have to look for it in the stores now so I can enjoy them here at home.

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!

Another FEBO Post

After drinking beer at Heineken Experience and doing more sightseeing, we wanted a snack before dinner. There are so many FEBO locations in Amsterdam and we happened upon a different one near the Red Light District. Why not try something else?


This FEBO had a slightly different layout. In this picture, you can also see the change machine that you can use, since the machines only take coins.

This time we got the satekroket, which was described as a spicy ragout from peanut and beef, which was then fried. The texture of the croquette was basically fried mush. I know that doesn't sound very good, but it actually tasted good. It was like satay sauce-flavored mush with a fried outside.


We intended to make another trip to FEBO to try the Asian burger (the special of the month) but never got around to it. Maybe we'll go back on our next visit to Amsterdam since we love trying different fast food!

Burgermeester

After our snack at FEBO, we walked around the city some more, and then took the tram over for lunch at Burgermeester.

Burgermeester has a few different locations in Amsterdam, and we went to the one in the De Pijp neighborhood because we were going to head over to the Heineken Experience after lunch. (Just a note: we did research on restaurants before our trip and came armed with an entire list of possibilities. It didn't stop us from stumbling on places, but we had certain places that we "knew" from our research would be good and this was one of them.)


M loved that the menu was completely in Dutch. To the side is the special of the month burger that we considered (but didn't get), the piri piri burger.


M got the kip (chicken) tandooriburger which came with gelderse hoen (something to do with chicken, we think?), tauge (bean sprouts) and mintyoghurt (mint yogurt). It was really, really good. And really, really huge. M should have gotten the mini, but she thought that was a slider size. When the burger came out, we were stunned by how big it was! But it was really good. The chicken was juicy and the toppings added a nice flavor.


A got the meester biefburger, which contained Blonde d'Aquitaine rund (beef), gegrilde groenten (grilled vegetables) and dragonmayo (tarragon mayo). A was expecting a little spice to the burger due to the "dragon" mayo, but after we found out dragon is Dutch for tarragon, it made sense that there was no heat. The burger was quite tasty. The patty was cooked very well with just a little pinkness to it even though it was a thinner patty. After the initial disappointment with no spice, A thoroughly enjoyed his burger.


Happy with our burgers! (See how huge they were?)


With burgers in our bellies, we headed off for some beer at the Heineken Experience (which we will leave for our personal blog since it's not really about food and the beer is just Heineken, even if it tastes better in Amsterdam)!

FEBO

Before heading to Amsterdam, M and I didn't really have much clue what constituted Dutch food. The only thing we really knew about were croquettes. Meat and/or veggies compressed together, spiced, and then deep fried. Could it get any better?

Day 2 of our European vacation started with a quick trip to a couple apotheeks in search of instant ice packs. As noted here, I was still recovering from knee surgery and wanted to try and alleviate pain and swelling as best I could since we'd be walking a lot. None were to be found so we resumed our eating extravaganza.

One of the few things we had researched and labeled as a "must try" was FEBO. FEBO is an automat serving little burgers, croquettes, and other delicious treats. They also have a counter that you can order from, but in all of our trips to FEBOs, we only saw people utilizing the automat portion. M has a thing for automats. She loves them. I'm not sure if it's the history behind them or if she just likes the novelty of them, but she really does love them. Me? I just like fried things :)

First view of the automat portion
So for our first trip to FEBO we took time to examine all of the choices before settling on the Bami croquette. It was a tasty little fried nugget filled with chicken and vegetables.

Me paying for our treat
Me getting our treat out of the window
Our tasty croquette
The croquette was very very tasty. Good outer crunch followed by a soft interior. The flavors of the croquette itself was faintly Asian. A touch of soy sauce, and a little hint of star anise. Yummy fried goodness.

Albert Heijn

Whenever we travel, a grocery store is always on my must-see list. (Funny, I came across this post after we were back from our trip. I see I am not the only one!)

One reason we visit grocery stores on our travels is a practical one. We stock up on breakfast (usually granola bars), water and snack foods. Domestically, we usually bring breakfast with us, because there isn't much difference between grocery stores, but internationally, I plan to buy it there. But the reason why I love visiting grocery stores? They're so much fun! They're great insights into the local culture and I just love finding all the different products.

The only "problem" with grocery stores in other countries (especially in other languages) is that I am fascinated by everything and want to take pictures of everything. I tried to restrain myself on our earlier visit at the airport grocery store and this visit from taking too many pictures.

Now that I've given you my grocery-store-obsession background, it should come as no surprise that Albert Heijn was high on our destination list. It's the main grocery store in Amsterdam and there are branches everywhere you look. They aren't gigantic like our supermarkets, and A remarked that this could be because people don't seem to stockpile like they do here and instead buy what they need at the time.

Here's a look at some of the things that fascinated me at the grocery store:

Packaged sandwiches that look perfect for bringing to work for lunch (if I did that sort of thing).


Boerenkool... does that look familiar?


Pizza!


Carrot balls (as opposed to baby carrots or carrot sticks)... they look cute!


Why can't we have shrimp chips in our regular grocery stores? Love.


This could work for a taco night party substitution:


Pretty strawberry cake.


These cats kind of scare me, although I guess you could find them cute.


Mmm... popsicles.


And of course, lots of paprika snacks.


And here's what we ended up buying:


2 boxes of breakfast bars (muesli reep) - natural and chocolate flavors, shrimp chips, paprika mini fries, Spa Reine water (huge bottle for cheap), mini stroopwafels (delicious, more on that later), and Haribo (my favorite candy brand which we need more of here) happy cherries.

This was the first of several Albert Heijn visits (mostly for water). Such fun!

De Rozenboom

Our first "real" meal in Amsterdam was at De Rozenboom, a place we stumbled upon after spending the first afternoon of our trip wandering the city to get acquainted and chasing the beer bike (more on that another time). We had passed many places that looked like pubs or restaurants, but didn't see anyone eating any food! They were only drinking beer so we had no idea what the food looked like. Then we found De Rozenboom on a little alley, and after we saw that they had some Dutch dishes, headed right in.


De Rozenboom was a cute little place built on multiple levels. They had tables outside and inside, and we opted for an inside table since it was getting cool (and I was one of about 5 people we saw that day wearing shorts).

They had a huge menu, with pancakes, soups, salads, burgers, lots of entrees with chicken, meat and fish options, and of course, the Dutch specialties. All of the Dutch dishes came with soup. It was a simple chicken soup with a nice, mild flavor. There wasn't much in it but it was a good broth which you could tell was made from real chicken. (Wow, I look completely exhausted.)


I got a dish called boerenkool met worst, which was listed on the menu as kale with a smoked sausage. I didn't know anything about this dish beforehand, and was expecting sausage with something like sauteed kale on the side, but what I got was this:


Mashed potatoes mixed with kale and topped with bacon! It was also accompanied by a nice salad which had something that tasted to us like rakkyo!

A ordered kapucijners met spek, uitjes, zuur, picalilly & bal gehakt, which was translated (they had an English page) as marrow peas with bacon, onions, pickles and a meatball. His dish also came with the salad.


It was so good. Both dishes were really tasty and a great introduction to Dutch traditional dishes, but I give A's dish a slight edge for tasting so healthy. It also wasn't as heavy as kale and bacon topped mashed potatoes! A also liked his better for similar reasons. He found it really refreshing and liked the marrow peas. The marrow peas were definitely a standout.


We also got Amstel beers to drink with dinner. I love how they serve beer in smaller glasses in Europe! Much more my style.

The dishes reminded us of Dutch comfort food and it was such a cute little restaurant, so it was perfect for a meal at the end of an exhausting travel day. If you should find yourself in the area (it's a short walk from the Spui tram stop), we definitely recommend it. Check out the marrow peas!

Uncle Gussy's

Food from a Greek truck? Yes, please.

I went to Uncle Gussy's, a truck located on 51st and Park, today for lunch. I wanted to take a walk and then got my mind set on a chicken pita, so I headed over. My plan B if the line was more than 20 people was to head back a few blocks and get chicken over rice from XPL.


Uncle Gussy's has pitas, platters, sandwiches, Greek salads and burgers. They also have daily specials "made by Mom." (Today it was tomatoes stuffed with rice and chopped meat.) The Greek salad sounded really good, but as I said, I was there for a chicken pita. Luckily the line wasn't that long and I quickly put in my order for a chicken pita deluxe.


I didn't really know what the difference was between a pita and the deluxe and didn't feel like asking at the time. I figured, it was my first time there, I'd find out what it was and then adjust accordingly next time. Turns out, unlike at diners where "deluxe" means fries but also the sandwich toppings, deluxe here just meant fries.


I got the sandwich on whole wheat pita. Liked having that option. I didn't add any other extras, so it came with lettuce, tomato, white sauce (tzatziki) and hot sauce.


And a better look at what's inside the pita:


The chicken pita was so good. I definitely want to go back for more, whether it's in a pita, platter or as the chicken gyro topping to the Greek salad. The chicken pita fulfilled my craving. Go visit Uncle Gussy's!

100 Tastes

The 2010 Time Out New York list of the 100 best dishes and drinks came out today. Out of everything on the list, we have had 1.5 (we both had 1, but only 1 of us had a 2nd).

Together we had the Great White Way concrete from Shake Shack (see: Shake Shack addiction) although we think that Jelly's Last Donut is better. It made so little impact that A didn't even remember that we had it.


The only other thing from the list is the spekuloos spread that A has had from wafels & dinges.

Other than those 2, we've been to a couple other places on the list but haven't had the "best" dish there. But there are so many more places to try! It's a good thing we started a food blog...

Kari Ayam

The Malaysia Kitchen Food Truck is currently out at lunchtime in NYC and will be on the road (during the week) for the next month or so. The aim of the truck is to promote Malaysian food and restaurants, and they are giving out free food at their station each day.

Today I heard they were parked near Bryant Park, so I ventured over around 2. There wasn't much of a line at all since it was on the later side.


Since it's all free samples, they limit you to one per person. Not having more choices and not taking money also helps the line move faster (and it moves quickly). Although free giveaways usually mean a madhouse, this line was fairly short.


They did a great job with the truck itself. If I were doing one of those marketing surveys where you pick which design you like, this would be up there.


The choices for the day, coming from Fatty Crab (which I have always wanted to try but haven't gotten to yet), were between kari ayam (chicken curry) and nasi lemak (coconut rice served with sambal, egg and cucumbers). My first instinct was to get nasi lemak because, well, I like nasi lemak. But I also like chicken curry and thought maybe that would be more flavorful. So I changed my mind and got that.


But the chicken had more skin than it did meat:


The coconut rice was good. The meat that I did get had a very mild flavor but it was good when mixed with the rice. It was just disappointing that it was so much skin and bone, and not much actual meat on the chicken. I should have gone with my first instinct and gotten the nasi lemak. Oh well. But, really, can't complain too much - it's free!

I'll be keeping an eye out for their tweets to see when they're in the neighborhood next. I can't wait to try something else!