Aan de Poel

I was never a big fan of Amstelveen. At least, until I ate at restaurant Aan de Poel. Perhaps it was capital city arrogance; perhaps it was because Amstelveen, a municipality near Schiphol Airport, is popular with families and I'm not at that stage in my life; or maybe I just hadn't been to the good parts.

We got lost somewhere along the seemingly endless Amstelveenseweg and then R.’s bike got a flat tyre, so it was a slow pedal to Aan de Poel. Once there, though, Amsterdam seemed a world away. The restaurant is located next to De Poel lake, with a large terrace right on the water's edge.

Image of Restaurant Aan de Poel terrace

The kitchen is helmed by Stefan van Sprang and Egon van Hoof, and 18 months after opening in 2007, the restaurant was awarded its first Michelin star. The French/international cooking style includes elements of molecular gastronomy and Japanese cuisine.

The menu is divided into à la carte fish and meat dishes - vegetarians are only accommodated if they alert Aan de Poel in advance - all of which can be ordered as starters or mains; and a dinner menu of four (€54) or five (€60) courses.

Each dish on Aan de Poel's dinner menu, although small, comprised a number of elements, often involving fruit. R.’s lobster and Pata Negra comprised morsels of crustacean and meat, accompanied by scoops of creamy sauce and a palate-cleansing strip of cucumber.

My yellow-fin tuna was served with bright red tomatoes with their skins pulled up around their stems, like skirts caught by the wind. This was topped with horseradish sauce and a sweet raspberry reduction.

Image of tuna at restaurant Aan de Poel

In contrast to my bright-red tuna, R.’s roasted Black Angus was accompanied by an inky truffle emulsion, dark chanterelle mushrooms and a dribble of purple rhubarb compote.

Much lighter, in all sense of the word, was my fried sea bass in a sesame seed crust, a green coin of seaweed crème, a single, salted broad bean and coconut-coated vegetables.

Image of sea bass at restaurant Aan de Poel Next up was a fancy version of a Scotch egg: a soft-boiled egg in a crispy shell, accompanied by a chunk of smooth goose liver mousse and garnished with a sprinkling of vanilla-flavoured shallots.

Image of Aan de Poel poached egg The presentation, which included touches such as pink wafers, flower petals and sprigs of sweet pea, was exquisite, something I hope the pictures in this restaurant review do more justice to than my descriptions.

The dinner menu dessert was yoghurt and peach, but after all the sweet elements in the preceding courses, we opted instead for the cheese plate from the à la carte menu.

We ordered the wine arrangement to accompany the meal. Each wine was excellent and superbly chosen, but I can't say anything more about them because the waiter had the irritating habit of directing all his comments at R., and rattling off the details at such a speed that I was barely able to catch the countries of origin.

With each course, the sun sank lower and lower, turning the lake a deep orange, until it finally dropped below the horizon as we sipped our espressos. Back in Aan de Poel's parking lot, however, the romance of lakeside dining quickly evaporated when we realised that R. wasn't going to make it back to Amsterdam on two wheels.

Lost once again, this time in a maze of residential backstreets in search of the nearest metro station, R. pushing his crippled bike as fast as he could, we made the last metro with about three minutes to spare. We were home in quarter of an hour, but it felt like we'd really been away from Amsterdam. And I got to see a side of Amstelveen that really isn't so bad...