Google Dutch Cuisine. Chatbots will serve you Stampot (mashed vegetables, served with various accoutrements), Bitterballen (stuffed croquettes), Kibbeling (battered and deep-fried white fish bites) and Poffertjes (mini pancakes, topped with butter and icing sugar). All heavy, filling foods tourists shovel in, red-eyed and smelling like a Coffeeshop (and not the caffeinated kind).
But what if you want food that isn’t designed to soak up Amsterdam’s hedonistic pleasures? What if you’re after – dare I say it – just a nice, classy meal?
Yuzu Dining Bar, a yakitori-style Japanese restaurant, is a sexy hang-out spot where locals fill up on coal-fired cuts of chicken. The options range from your classic chicken wing, to the cartilage, achilles, heart and even the knee bone.
Yakitori – a Japanese style of skewering and grilling meats, normally chicken – is, very clearly, not Dutch cuisine. In fact, it’s still relatively new in The Netherlands. Rijsttafel, a platter of Indonesian meats, rice, breads and vegetables, might be the most commonly consumed Asian cuisine in Amsterdam thanks to its massive postcolonial Indonesian population – the Netherlands brutally colonised Indonesia from the early 17th century until independence in 1945 – but that means it’s easy to fall into the tourist trap its Bitterballen and Kibbeling share.
When looking for a spot that the local Dutch dine in, it’s important to remember the golden rule: Dutch people don’t eat Dutch food out. Why would they, when they can eat it at home?
Yuzu Dining Bar is exactly the sort of place to go if you want to surround yourself with the young, trendy people of Amsterdam. The sizzle of the Binchotan (Japanese white charcoal) from the open kitchen mingles with the gentle buzz of diners sat on bar stools, slowly making their way through each part of the bird.
Japanese cuisine in The Netherlands only fully took off in the early 2010s, which makes the city a level playing field for exciting new Japanese joints. This means the prices are reasonable, and the quality is unmatched.
I tried nearly every yakitori item on the menu; not one skewer was dull. Yuzu Dining Bar affirms that chicken doesn’t simply have to taste of just chicken. Each skewer came prepared with its own delightful little twist –a personal favourite was the Hatsu – or chicken heart.
I could make a pun on how it’s not for the chicken-hearted, but that would be wrong. Everyone should try chicken heart. I’ll take the small, smokey-sweet bites, plump in texture and full in flavour over chicken nuggets any day. Other standouts included the chicken meatball, fragrant with ginger and lemongrass, served with a soy-preserved egg yolk to dip into.
When eating out, I always select places which serve food I could never recreate at home. Yes, I could butcher a whole chicken, but I don’t possess Japanese white charcoal, nor do I know the age-old cooking technique of warayaki, a method which involves burning straw to extremely high temperatures to sear meat, keeping its moisture locked in.
Yuzu Dining Bar is the sort of place you go for slow dining: I suggest ordering at least five yakitori, before making your way through the signature dishes. The Katsu Sando, a deep-fried chicken cutlet on fluffy bread and yuzu ketchup, as well as the Sea Bream Sashimi with chicken crackling were personal favourites. Order with a side of Miso Cucumber for palette cleanser.Â
Finish with a measure of their sharp, lip-smacking yuzu sake, and call it a night. That’s how the locals do it.
