Breaking with tradition, the Foodies had breakfast at the Kipling Hotel in Geneva before a day of travel. Scrambled Egg and Sausage, with some English style baked beans, it was a filling start to the day.
Because breakfast is included in the room rate, it has no separate value.
Lunch
We had lunch between flights at Amsterdam Schippol Airport at Leon. Foodie Philip had Moroccan style meatballs, while Foodie Greg had a Chicken and Chorizo dish. Both served over brown rice with a side salad of cabbage, kale, mint and fresh peas. They were, effectively rice bowls.
Lunch was $9.52 each.
Because we were serve a sandwich on the KLM flight from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, we didn’t feel any need for dinner. Although, after an exploratory walk around the new neighborhood, we did go have some Danish cocktails at Strøm – a nearby bar.
After walking around Geneva for a couple of hours we were ready for some food. There seems to be every option available so we chose Lebanese food at Les Saveurs du Liban, near our hotel.
The first choice of a tartar required advance notice so we both opted for the sample platter, which had a great variety of excellent food.
Geneva is not cheap and a simple lunch and sparkling water cost $67.99 Swiss Francs or $69.34, split between us that’s $34.67 per serve.
Lunch is today’s featured image.
Dinner
After another walk in the other direction we settled on an Italian restaurant near the hotel, and wanted to share a pizza. However, this strange proprietor refuses to allow people to share only one dish, requiring a dish to be purchased for every person at the table. A very good reason to never return.
Our waiter was delightful, however, and suggested a simple salad as the choice for the second person, so we continued and had a reasonably good seafood pizza and the ‘essential’ salad.
This was also the first time we came across 500ml bottles of wine and we shared an excellent local (Geneva) wine.
The pizza and salad were 26 Swiss Francs or $13.26 each, excluding the wine.
Thanks to a friend, we went to Gruyére – the town where the eponymous cheese is made. The weather was misty with occasional rain, so where better to have fondue, based on gruyére cheese. Served with potatoes, Cornichons(small pickled gherkins), pickled onion and potatoes, with a side of thinly sliced dried beef, the fondue way exceeded our exceptions.
The meal was a great balance of fatty/salty cheese cut by the cornichons and pickled onion, with a little intensely flavored meat and is today’s featured image.
Being a tourist destination, despite being a living town, the meal was not cheap at $44.80 but the serving was generous. Of course, we added another $13.44 each having triple cream, meringue and fresh raspberries for dessert. That’s something we rarely do, but it was too good to pass up.
Fresh raspberries, meringue and triple cream.
We left the table after two wonderful hours feeling completely full.
So full, in fact that we did not feel the need for dinner!
Time to say goodbye for Amsterdam for this year, and travel on to Geneva to present on metadata to filmmakers there.
At Shiphol Airport we each had an egg and bacon sandwich on wholemeal bread, which was surprisingly good.
As you’d expect at an airport, they were not cheap at $6.30 each.
Dinner
After the presentation was over and most folk had left, we were treated to an excellent vegetarian dinner in Cafe du Grutli adjacent to the presentation theater in the same building in Geneva.
The proprietor suggested she provide a selection of appetizers followed by a sample plate of their entrees.
At the left, zucchini wrapped deliciousness. At the right, highly picked aubergine and zucchini with goat cheese.Watermelon ‘carpaccio’ with pickled ginger and avocado.
The entree plate sampled an array of really great flavors, but without a menu we can’t remember the details. Each of the samples was excellent from the curry and chick peas, to the spinach, mushroom barley, and sweet potato with a fig in the center.
Dinner tonight was sponsored by Luma Forge, makers of the popular ShareStation shared storage solutions.
One of our traditions during IBC is to head to Van Dobbin off Rembrantsplein and have Filet Américain, which is a Benelux variation steak tartar: raw beef.
It was, as always, amazingly good and cost $5.04 per serve.
Dinner
Eetcare Koevoet was so good that we decided to have our last evening meal in Amsterdam there. Foodie Philip had a very excellent Bolognese while Foodie Greg had the Eggplant Parmesan. They did not disappoint. Both were excellent.
The night before, while paying, Foodie Philip ‘overheard’ some comments between staff about why we had not had the ‘sorbet’. Figuring we might have missed something great, we opted for the Lemon sorbet, with vodka and prosecco It was a perfect dessert: not too sweet with a little alcohol kick and very refreshing.
This excellent meal cost $25.75 per serve, with ‘dessert’ in a glass.
We had the good fortune to have a Dutch friend collect use from the train and drive us to Schokland where we had a ‘toastie’ each. It’s a toasted ham and cheese sandwich served with ketchup.
The toastie was $4.48 each.
We went on to Giethoorn where we had some bitterballen while waiting for our canal boat ride.
Dinner
Michael Horton had been wanting to try the food at Eetcafe Koevoet so, since we were walking past, we decided to stop in. Michael had thought it expensive, but it was comparable cost to the Capri, but with a higher standard of food.
All our meals were excellent. Foodie Greg had cannelloni while Foodie Philip had another steak. This time with a green pepper sauce. The bolognese was “the best I’ve ever had” said Michael.
The side salad was radicchio, fennel and steamed (but cold) green beans. Foodie Philip has a mixed relationship with fennel. Like most vegetables in the Netherlands the flavor was more intense than in California, so that went to Foodie Greg to enjoy.
Like the Capri, the meal cost an average of $20.00 a head.
Another Lunch with Philip and Greg recording and our serious foodie guest Gary Adcock chose Feduzzi because it everything is made fresh, to order.
Definitely above average and our panini’s cost $7.84 each.
Dinner
We decided to check out a local tapas place we’d passed going to lunch. It must be local as we found our temporary landlady having dinner there with her husband.
This week has been atypically hot in Amsterdam where there is a rule that once the temperature goes over 25 Celsius (that’s around 77 F) restaurants can move as many tables as they like to the sidewalk. As do a lot of residents!
Tapas Dos spread to both sides of the street and canal bridge. Foodie Greg can be seen above the stroller wheels!
Being a local ‘joint’ we weren’t sure what to expect but the food was pretty good. Being Tapas we shared three plates.
The endive with blue cheese, capers and red onion dressing was unexpected. Endive (a.k.a. whitloff) is quite bitter, but the salty blue cheese offset the bitterness and the result was strong, but delicious. (See featured image)
We chose sardines because neither of us had ever had fresh sardines. The tomato and red onion salsa was a good complement to the fish. Technically there is no ‘sardine.’ The term is used to cover a variety of species caught and served as small fish.
Sardines with a tomato and red onion salsa.
Our third dish was ordered as a filet, but the word came back that the kitchen wasn’t happy with the filet, so a rib eye was suggested as the second alternative. The meat was good and the tomato based sauce was tasty, but unmemorable against the other dishes.
Rib eye with tomato sauce
The endive was definitely the tastiest dish of the three.
At lunch were were recording an episode of Lunch with Philip and Greg and we had carpaccio (with fries, Belgian style) or a smoked salmon open sandwich. Both were excellent, along with the conversation.
In US$ the meal cost $15.40 per serve.
Dinner
Back to our favorite restaurant in Amsterdam – The Capri – where Foodie Philip had a steak with gorgonzola cream sauce, while Foodie Greg had a tortellini. Again, both were excellent.
We shared the cost across the table, so including wine and beer, which I normally would not include, the meal cost $33.60 per serve.
The second day of our trade show event had sandwiches on site, so we enjoyed those at no cost.
Both days the sandwiches were excellent. A real cut above what you would expect for similar sandwiches in the US.
Dinner
Our annual Amsterdam Supermeet event, where we were exhibiting. Like the event two nights earlier, the finger food was excellent: smoked salmon, prosciutto wrapped melon, bitterballen and various crochets were all excellent.
We didn’t pay anything directly for the food, but as an Event sponsor, we did pay quite a lot indirectly!
We were working at a trade show style presentation event so lunch were half each of a chicken sandwich and cheese sandwich from the supermarket, purchased ahead of time.
Cost per serve, approximately $6.00
Dinner
For dinner we ate in a group of friends at a ‘Mexican’ restaurant in Amsterdam, which is as authentic as you would expect. The Foodies both had some very excellent lamb loin chops, with steak fries and a garden salad.
