Toscanini [Amsterdam]

This bustling Italian restaurant sits in a quiet Amsterdam neighborhood, facing one of the city's many canals. The menu is brief, but it is accompanied by a lengthy list of daily specials. Like many good restaurants, the food is at the mercy of the chefs' daily whims, rather than held to a prescribed menu.

 

The starters (antepasti, I suppose) were delicious - even the one salad in our party seemed to be unnaturally tasty. I began with an order of tortellini with 'ink' sauce. It failed to dye my lips (boo), but was rich and tasty. Apparently a vegetarian version also existed, but I'm not sure what actually counted as meat in the dish I had - does squid ink count as squid? (Do squid have to die to harvest ink? Or are there squid-milking facilities somewhere? I hope the latter).

I had one of the daily specials as my main course - a plate of goat. It was a sizable ziggurat of assorted goat parts - a kidney (delicious), steak (delicious) and shank (not so great) being the most prominent. Next to me sat a similar dish - except with lamb - which earned equal praise.

Exposed brick walls and an open kitchen give Toscanini a warm and comfortable feel, one that is aided further by the friendly and casual service. The hostess helped us choose our wine (while coping with our inability to read either Dutch or Italian), the waiter didn't hesitate to recommend good dishes and the cook waved to us merrily on the way out.

Definitely worth a repeat visit - apparently reservations can be difficult to come by, but we found booking online to be extremely easy.

Toscanini
Lindengracht 75
1015 KD
Amsterdam
         +31 (020) 6232813      

Web site (and online booking)

Comments

[Dan]

Marvellous! I'm in Amsterdam next weekend. And I like goat.

[Jared]

Toscanini is definitely worth the visit. And go for the whole 'pasta as starter approach'.

Another one I've heard wonderful things about is a place called 'Red' that specialises in huge hunks of beef. I can't find any more details about it, because if you google, 'Amsterdam' + 'Red' + 'any other word', you just get a lot of stuff about the red light district. Shocking.