Wonderful Eatery in Amsterdam - La Place

After our rather long and wet walk on Wednesday morning, we doubled back to one of the shopping centers we had passed and had lunch in the ground floor cafeteria called La Place (link in dutch only).  I've never seen a food hall quite like this and I do rather hope I have the opportunity to see more of these in the future.  Basically it was a large food hall with all manner of freshly cooked or prepared items at various counters.  You helped yourself and paid at a central kiosk.  So the layout itself it not especially unfamiliar, but the array of food on offer was absolutely outstanding.  There were freshly backed items - bread, muffins, croissants, cakes and hot savouries; myriad cold salads; freshly squeezed juices - including a fruit salad in a glass topped up with fresh juice, or a lemon and mint juice, or strawberry juice; an asian section where you choose your various items and handed them to the attendant to cook in a wok as you watched; a stand of hot soup - white asparagus, fresh vegetable or fresh tomato and basil; pizza; grilled items - again you choose your meat or fish and have it cooked while you wait.  Fantastic!  We shared a selection of salads, a bowl of white asparagus soup and one of those fruit salads in a glass with juice.  Simon managed to take a few photos before he had finger waggled at him advising there were no photos allowed!  Actually, the finger was waggled at ME once the woman realised I was with the guy taking the photos!

Epic Stout 2010… this is one heavy beer.

Very dark in colour, this stout from the Epic Brewing Company is an international collaborative brew between NZ and the UK that is aged in oak and not for the faint hearted.

On her first taste, Jane’s description is very apt.

"It’s like chewing on a board of smoky cedar.  Ohhh, but it has chocolate at the end of it."

It has a nice chocolate aroma, a very strong smoky cedar & malt flavour with medium-long duration.  For my taste buds, it’s a bit too heavy and bitter (I see it’s 6.8% alcohol, so that will be a contributing factor), but that may be more a statement of where I’m at on my stout journey. 

The beer did accompany chilli remarkably well, and Jane is quite happy to drink it again.