Bars made plates full of flavorings

When I was about sixteen years old, my life took place in the Amsterdam Rivierenbuurt, mainly within the triangle between my house on Victorieplein, Vechtstraat, where my best friend lived in the class, and Coffeeshop Topweazle, just around the corner of Vrijheidslaan. That piece has changed considerably. The hi-fi store, for example, where I bought my first stereo installation (and only, because it still does it) and spent a small fortune on CDs did not make it. Just like Snackbar Happé.

What it didn’t make is the sheet music shop on the corner of Trompenburgstraat. I thought it was wonderful about thirty years ago that it survived there. It was a mysterious place that you never knew if it was open – looking inside was impossible by the piles of yellowed papers that lay piled up to the ceiling. I have ever been inside, what I don’t know anymore. I suspect that they had no tabulature from Iron Maiden or Halen, because I have never been back there.

Exactly in that corner building has been Café Remouillage for seven years, a small restaurant of the originally Austrian chef Jonathan Sparber. For me, the same mysticism is hanging around Removerage as around that score shop: how can it go? It is only open three evenings a week. It is tucked away in a residential area. Sparber (who does almost everything himself, with the help of just a person in the ministry) cooks far too challenging and intellectually to fulfill a function as a eatery for the local residents.

But Removerage survives. Good thing, too. Because Sparber is a unique and authentic, headstrong culinary mind. Removerage is nothing to be compared. In a single case it is far -fetched – I have sometimes spent around whether there was a hidden camera somewhere. But in general, memorable things sprout from the free spirit of the chef. Like the sourdoughtast that is engraved in my memory, with a layer of mega-smoking white beans, perfectly until al dente cooked, and on it a wafer-thin blanket of lightly roasted, flowery, fat lardo (back bacon). Brilliant simplicity. And so daring, almost philosophical, to serve that as the main course.

Café Remouillage has already been in seven years ago NRC stood in the Amsterdam supplement. But time and time again I am so impressed by the individuality of the dishes that I think it deserves national attention.

Wafer -thin lemon

Removerage is not about aesthetics: the retrome furniture and Gispen tube seats look great with the original granito floor, but for the rest the interior is ragged, not stylized raw, but unfinished, a bit like a student room. The signs themselves are also made up, nothing is cut, the splashes are not swept off the edges, no tweezers are used here. But that does not bother, it only emphasizes the core of the matter: the abstract flavor art on the board, the search for the essence.

Sparber twice touches that essence tonight. First in his opening move: a full, barely grainy Sardinian ricotta as a creamy canvas for a composition of tomato and lemon – which were previously sprinkled with salt, piled up and put away for a few days, so that they are lightly peaked into their own moisture. The Umami from the tomato is accentuated by a subtle lava oil. The lemon is cut so paper-thin that it is to eat and eat it, the bitter of the white is suppressed by the intense salt, but you do have a full aromatic six experience and it gives a very pleasant bite.

The intense salt also just removes the bitter edge of the Perlmutt Riesling, which changes the kumquat into the wine into a sultry orange.

Zoom in

The second direct hit is a piece of stewed monkfish with roasted planed almonds, in its own gravy. The fish is almost spreadable soft, but not mushy, the almonds give something to chew. The genius is in the combination of the sweet nutriness and the dashi-like, reduced stew of the fish. It has the complexity of an intensely satisfying, layered chicken grain. It is nothing but almond and fish! Very clever to get so much taste out of it. (And wonderful to serve the cool fish jaw next to it including a gelatinous eye, for the adventurous jug.)

Neatly made up raw sea bass and belly (it contains a texture and taste difference) with crossbar and a crispy mousemeloentje is a fresh and fruity pesce crudo. Calf start -up at room temperature in half -gold, roasted shallots in a puree of immature, pickled walnut is an interesting work that sands light when consuming.

Once it really flies out of the corner: a dish of tough pieces of roasted corn, with very fatty pieces of fried fennel, beautiful white beans (that is) and liquorice herb – leaves that actually taste like drop – looks like a clique and tastes equally incomprehensible. A second, the same kind of clique for the eyes is a very crazy but pleasant after the seafar. This ‘main course’ is a kind of coarse stew with pieces of potato, haricots verts and sponge mushroom in butter and smoked olive oil. The snappy mushroom gets something very meaty from the animal proteins in the butter and the smoke taste.

This is typically such a dish that you don’t eat anywhere else. Remouillage is unique and stimulating. And that is why I am already curious about what awaits us next time.

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