Attitude of Gratitude

Aaron and I at Fifteen Amsterdam (taken on cell phone)

As many of you know I have a great passion for fine food and last week I had the opportunity to taste test another place owned by a chef many of you have probably heard of – Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef)! I have been watching Jamie grow up on the small screen over the years and had no idea that he even had a restaurant in A’dam until earlier this year when he promoted his restaurant by having a free dinner for people who had dual passports with the UK. I tried to get in on it but seems like the entire country knew about it before I did and it sold out within minutes.

I mistakenly thought that the restaurant had just opened, when actually it opened in 2004. It is named Fifteen and is the second in a series of four same named restaurants of Jamie’s. They are built based on an interesting concept – and one I admire – which is to take in disadvantaged youths and train them to work in world class restaurants. I watched a program on it and saw Jamie’s frustrations with trying to motivate them to have a passion for cooking, but never though I’d actually be eating at one of the establishments myself. The kids are trained for 16 months in the restaurant where they get to work with some world class chefs from famous restaurants in Holland, like Vermeer, a Michelin star restaurant in A'dam. Now they are training their 3rd group of trainees.

They have a set 4 course menu for €46 and in addition we added the wine paring for each course. The menu was:

To get you started…
Antipasti Jamie's favourites
Primi…
A dish of risotto with seafood treasures
Secondi …
Roasted Pheasant with red cabbage ragout and sautéed fresh vegetables
Dolci…
Luscious parfait

Overall I thought it was a very nice meal, however I was not at all impressed with the pasta course. I did not find them to be "treasures" at all, but more like chewy, hard, tasteless nuggets. I told them so and they delighted us by bringing the vegetarian pasta selection instead – a perfectly al dente pumpkin (just in time for Thanksgiving) ravioli that was… simply to. die. for. Absolutely excellent. And on top of that, they also brought the wine paring as well. All free of charge, which is practically unheard of in a Dutch restaurant.

I also found the wine sommelier to be well educated about the wines and very friendly in addition. He was fairly ambitious in his parings, giving us a selection of Moroccan, Australian and Argentinean wines, which all worked surprisingly well. But tell me, who has ever even heard of drinking Moroccan wines?

I got his card, though, and might give him a call about doing a wine tasting at the restaurant. I think that sounds like an absolutely lovely way to spend an evening and experience some more Jamie...