Year: 2010

Great Deal Italian Take Away – Pasta di Pino

Update: Vino di Pino had to close around mid July 2011. Apparently a disagreement with the landlord forced him to leave the location on Haarlemmermeerstraat. Pino is currently looking for a new location where he can reopen shop.

The area around Hoofddorpplein has a great new Italian take away option. Italian wine store Vino di Pino started offering pasta dishes a few weeks ago and has been cooking up a storm since then!

The pasta is prepared fresh in the kitchen of the store and very good. It started out with a daily dish and has grown into a full-fledged menu with several starters, pasta dishes and desserts. The menu changes with daily specials and classics like lasagna, parmigiana alle melanzane or penne all’arrabbiata. There were some great truffle specials and recently also main courses like osso buco.

The food is very good and a great deal at € 5,= per portion. What’s really special is the warm and friendly atmosphere that owner Pino creates. He welcomes all regulars and new visitors with a big smile and a fun story. After explaining the menu and specials of the day, Pino quickly moves the conversation to other topics, taking a personal interest in his customers, talking about recent developments in the neighborhood or showing videos of the latest local food and wine events that Pino is organizing with some of the other cafe and shop owners on Hoofddorpplein. While chatting, Pino loves to break out a bottle of wine from the store and offer a taste to shorten the wait for the take away food.

I’ve been a frequent visitor recently, enjoying great take away pasta at an attractive price and catching up with Pino and other neighbors over a glass of wine. As an additional benefit you can purchase the wine at 50% off for the second bottle.

pasta take away vino di pino

Grab a Piece of dutchgrub

Recently I’ve discussed the idea of guest posts with a number of fellow foodies and bloggers.

The idea started when I was thinking about posts about food and restaurants in places other than Amsterdam and the Netherlands. I travel frequently and food is an important part of each trip. And I like to share my food experiences from those trip. The dutchgrub blog, however, does not seem like the perfect place to post about restaurants in Lisbon, Cape Town or NYC.

At the same time it would be nice to add other foodies’ opinions about the food and restaurant scene in Amsterdam. And also encourage contributions from guest writers about food in other parts of the Netherlands that I am less familiar with and that I get frequent questions about.

So in December I made a start by publishing a guest post about Restaurant Clio in Boston on the fantastic blog of The Boston Foodie. And later this week I will share the first guest post on dutchgrub by Andy who is from NYC and will share his favorite restaurant in The Hague.

Please drop me a note if you’re a foodie and would like to share your Dutch food experiences on dutchgrub or have a food blog about Berlin, Cape Town, Hamburg, Lisbon or NYC and are interested in hosting a guest post by a fellow blogger.

La Oliva Amsterdam – No, Really, Don’t Bother

About a year ago I stumbled upon La Oliva, a then brand new tapas and pintxos bar in the Jordaan. I tried it out and posted about my disappointment. La Oliva is perfectly located on a pretty corner smack in the middle of the Jordaan. And the restaurant looks great with its stylish decor and display of cured hams, wine bottles and pintxos. Unfortunately the food is average and high-priced and the service pretentious.

Over the last few months I had heard several positive reviews of La Oliva and some dutchgrub readers left comments saying that the food was delicious and the service nice and helpful. So I decided to try again and did a few days ago when I was in the area.

Unfortunately I must say that I was right. I wanted to like La Oliva, because it looks great and Amsterdam needs a good tapas bar. But I didn’t because it’s all about appearance and not about food.

la oliva amsterdam - pintxos

The pintxos were lukewarm and stale, especially the tortilla. And the ingredients were of inferior quality, which really ruined the Serrano ham appetizer. And to add insult to injury, the little tart with tomato sauce actually seemed to be deep freezer quality. Then we had some tapas and a dish from the main menu, which were small and rather bland. The wine was ok but very expensive at € 40,= for an average bottle of tempranillo.

All in all we paid more than € 150,= between the three of us for average food and wine and left as disappointed as the first time. So, no, don’t bother about La Oliva. Really.