Ran into this quaint place for a bite and some tea.
Got more amuses that I can count. Or, I could probably count them but I didn’t hipster all the way out and snap pictures of all of them:
From top: chocolate with chili creme (yum!), some sashimi with a different name (also good) with crackers – really the first we got – in the background, and some shrimp (only two are edible, the rest is just decoration). Not pictured: all the crackers we got (there were a lot and they were so-so), some funny merengue with vegetarian caviar which was served on our hands, and eel on a biscuit of potato (which was very tasty).
They put a lot of effort into presentation, and also very gimmicky presentation (case in point, the merengue literally served by splashing some sauce on our right hands and putting the merengue on it) and the shrimp which looked very pretty but taste-wise was a bit meh. My favorite was the chocolate, because of how the ingredients played together – first you just tasted the cream, then the chocolate and in the after-taste the chili.
We went for the menu, but cut down the 6 courses to just 4. Starter:
Sea-bass with cucumber on the main plate, some sushi on the other, and bread with olive oil which the otherwise great sommelier was way to enthusiastic about. In-between:
Spicy fish with all kinds of roots. Very flavorful and a huge tussengerecht.
Fairly light but very well cooked. More showmanship: the towel on the left came compressed and the waitress poured some water over it to make it pop out. Sophie hadn’t seen that before, and the waitress gave a happy “ta-daa” for effect as the towel popped up 🙂 Maybe, I’m a bread-snob, but the bread was dull at best. Dessert:
I cleverly saved the piece of white chocolate near the bottom for the end, which together with the amuse nicely framed the meal. The mousse in the pan-cake thing was very light, and the entire dessert not nearly as heavy as it seems. All in all, the meal was pretty front heavy, so that’s nice.
Got myself some chocolates for the tea:
The lollypop in the middle was chocolate was chocolate with sea salt, which worked surprisingly well.
All in all, the meal was very nice and didn’t make we want to barf even once. Pretty fair for €125/person including apéritif, half wine-arrangement and tip. It’s probably the highlight of the week, which admittedly doesn’t say much with the runner up being free chocolates from Sligro and the third place a tie between “not getting hit by a car while waiting for a late bus” and “only nearly getting soaked while biking home in depressing weather,” but I’d go back. Once I’ve been the full tour of the Michelin stars around Eindhoven. With Boreas down, Avant Garde blacklisted and Karpendonkse Hoeve being well-known, that just leaves one two-star place, Treeswijkhoeve, and one/two (depending on how far you’re willing to go), the reportedly over-priced Wiesen and the far-away Wollerich (which might be the next target).
