Albert Heijn – the local supermarket – and Iens – a restaurant review site – are having a joint promotion, in which you get a sticker for every 10 Euros you spend. Once you have collected 10 stickers you can enjoy a second 3-course menu at one of the participating restaurants for free. There’s quite a large variety of restaurants to choose from and they’re split by price category. It’s a great deal and to celebrate the end of midterms Anouk and I decided to go try out one of these restaurants. With our sticker card in hand and braving the terrible cold rainy weather we headed to Vis aan de Maas. This restaurant is literally at the Maas, and it’s quite inconvenient to get there by public transport. We didn’t realise this beforehand though and were just looking forward to enjoying some nice fish.
We arrived and after drying up a bit we were handed the menu – the menu for the promotion is a separate one, so we didn’t need to spend that much time deciding what to eat. For every course we had two choices and we were given the option to add a course for an additional 9 Euros per dish. At first we didn’t think we’d want to add another course, but the description made it far too tempting. It was a trio of Tuna. After placing our order we were first given a little amuse bouche. It was a salmon tartare with some salad. It was a nice little refreshing start to our meal. For starters Anouk and I both ordered the shrimp prepared three ways. The first preparation was that of the Dutch way – cocktail shrimp with cocktail sauce. The second was a fried preparation with a crunchy crust and dressed with a soy sauce dressing and the third was a tempura shrimp with terriyaki sauce. All three preparations were very tasty, although I did find the crust on the fried shrimp a little too salty. Luckily we had some bread with garlic aioli to cut through the salt.
For our additional course we were given the trio of tuna. Tuna sashimi with a soy sauce dressing, tuna tartare and grilled tuna with a wasabi mayo. The fish was extremely fresh and I especially enjoyed the tuna sashimi. I had been wanting to eat some nice raw fish for quite some time now. The grilled tuna was also perfectly cooked to rare, remaining nice and pink inside. We were going to be eating a lot of tuna this night, since next up was our main course, which was also tuna. It was a tuna steak in Chermoulata accompanied by some spring vegetables and truffle risotto – the original dish had rucola salad and potato salad, but we’d asked to have the potato salad replaced (very kind of them to do so). The tuna steak was supposedly with Chermoulata, however we couldn’t really detect any of that. We also had to send back both our first dishes as the tuna was overcooked – medium, instead of the rare we’d asked for. On the second try, the tuna was cooked perfectly, however we still felt the need to season it ourselves. I felt that the amount of vegetables they gave us was quite sad, just a few beans and one slice of zucchini. Also the truffle risotto was very dry and I believe overcooked. After the great courses before, this was somewhat of a disappointment.
For dessert I got a lemon crema catalana with red berries and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was a very tasty dessert, but the portion was huge and I could nearly not finish it. Also I think the custard might have curdled a bit, since it had some lumps. Still tasty though.
Overall it was a nice dinner and I especially enjoyed it catching up with Anouk after quite a busy period. I think Vis aan de Maas has some great food, but a bit more attention to detail might go a long way. And of course here’s a shot of us, all happy.
Restaurant: Vis aan de Maas
Address: Schiemond 40, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Website: http://www.visaandemaas.nl/
Hungry Bubbly Berries 