Izkaya

Ruchi, (My Only Indian friend here in Rotterdam) pinged me over the chat and suggested a restaurant called Izkaya a Pan Asian restaurant and bar at lijnbaan, which she wanted to visit for its experience. From the name I guessed, it would be a Japanese restaurant so went on their website to check for the veg. options.

Well, the restaurant does offer quite a unique experience to order food and interaction with staff etc. There is a digital menu on your table. You don't have to wait for the waiter to come and take your order. The tables are normal but over each of them there are dedicated projectors hanging from the ceiling. On the right side of the table you have a small round mouse pad; your table becomes the screen. There is menu bar which has the options for drink, food, dessert, other fun stuff (which includes games, change the table background (tablecloth), call taxi or check how to reach to your next destination, see your meal being prepared in kitchen through the webcam and at the end the bill can be requested).

While browsing through each dish or drink the picture and description appears which makes it so easy to understand what to expect.

Check out their video! http://www.youtube.com/v/Ycs-fKpQTiE

Since it was our first visit, most of the time while ordering, we spent in exploring the stuff, which was lot of fun.

For drinks Ruchi and Hugo ordered a Japanese soft drink, Astrid had ordered Ice tea, Hubby had order Plum Sake and I ordered Nomi tea (which I later found out that it was the name of brand of tea and out of the box given to me with different flavours, I chose Orange Spice and White tea).

And then the first dish arrived- Chicken Yakitori! and rice on the side, which was ordered by Astrid. Being vegetarian i only tried the rice which were so aromatic and tasty. I could just have only rice.

The second dish arrived on our table was Salmon Sashmi, a stater ordered by Hugo. It was Salmon on the seaweed salad. As per him it was out of the world!

Third dish belonged to Ruchi, which was fish curry with rice. she loved it.

Then arrived the Grilled Green Asparagus Salad with Poached egg and Curry Mayonnaise, which was ordered by my hubby. Oh My God, I loved the wasabi added to the dressing.. It was just Yum!

And my order- Veg. Potato soup. It was presented very nicely with a soup dish having veggies and a scoop of light cream cheese and soup was given in a jar separately to be poured over cream cheese and veggies. Soup was very light. cream cheese added a unique taste and body to the soup. I enjoyed it.

Since Astrid and Ruchi had ordered their main couse in the forst course only so Hugo, Naren and me continued ordering!

For the next course Hugo had ordered Hotstone Beef Tenderloin ( beef tenderloin marinated in black been sauce served with eggplant in vintage vinegar) and rice on the side. The dish was a wonderful visual treat and as per Hugo it was equally tasty as well!

Naren had ordered Small Sushi platter ( 3 pieces each of Nilgiri and Maki Sushi with soy sauce and wasabi); According to him, this was the best sushi he had eaten so far. He could taste the fish unlike at other places where rice dominate. I am sure next time he is gonna order only Sushi there.

My second order was Moyashi Itame ( Stir fry with bean sprout, shiitake, ginger, chilli pepper, green asparagus and basmati rice) which was quite tasty as well.

For desert, Hugo ordered Lemon Parfait, which again he loved it and Hubby n i had shared Chocolate Mouse with Cherries, the mouse was good but there were alot cherries which neither I nor my hubby enjoyed.

We liked the experience and loved the food! but they only have three veg. options, i had the them all of them. I would only got for the salad again for sure :)

Chili Time Thai Restaurant

I really crib about the bland food i get at the restaurants here. What would be an Indian food with spices. I bet, a normal khichdi(cheese less indian risotto) would taste better than that. The Mexican food is not really Mexican, all the taste has been adjusted to dutch palate. I understand that they can't really take spices. But, for the people like us, who have arrived from Asia recently, they have to compromise on the taste. Being a vegetarian, I am anyway left limited option.

Well, last Friday me n hubby, finally went to a Thai restaurant that he had been telling me about for past couple of weeks. He didn't really say much about its food to me than about the owner/worker there. who speaks Hindi very well and is a big fan of Bollywood movies.

I liked the decor, nice cozy place, red walls with Buddha face masks and wall hangings and just right amount of light. Since we weren't very hungry and also limited vegetarian options, we ordered spring rolls for starters and ice teas and in main course mango salad and 'Kaeng Khiaw Wan' Green curry with coconut sauce prepared with various Thai vegetables(as this curry was marked with two chilies, means mild chili. there wasn't any curry with three chili mark) and i thought per dutch standard this would suit us) and steam rice were on the house.



Spring rolls were nice cooked, golden and crisp, but the quantity of vegetable filling was very less. Mango salad as you saw in the picture above, was made of ripe mangoes. which was little sweet but tasted good. The Thai green curry, as i mentioned above was mild but would had appreciated more variety of Thai vegetables having said that, the flavor was great. I was happy with it. At least no bland food. Dessert section didn't offer any Thai dessert so didn't have any there.

And about that owner/worker (looked South East Asian, i didn't try to confirm, who he was of the two, was quite a friendly person, was personally going to take the feedback at every table that too in their language. I heard him speaking in Spanish and dutch as well and he spoke to my husband in fairly good Hindi.

As we were walking back home which was around 3 km, we stopped by for coffee at a Very Italian Pizza, a new Italian joint just outside Blaak Station. We ordered a cappuccino each and a Panna Cotta.


Panna Cotta was yum. And for cappuccino this has become my favourite place in Rotterdam. where, the second time i tasted the real cappuccino. I had mentioned about my first here