Set back from the hubbub but within touching distance of the action, Contemporary Dutch restaurant Hemelse Modder represents the best of central Amsterdam, combining a warm, relaxed welcome with excellent food and a few refreshingly civilised, open-minded touches of the type that make all the difference to your visit.
You’ll order from a brief, regularly rotated menu, with perhaps four options for each course, but somehow be spoiled for choice by a fairly even mix of dishes to cater to the vegetarian, pescatarian or carnivore in your party. You’ll also have the waters of your decision muddied by the appetising choices which make up the daily specials.
On our visit, our starters –all roulades and rillettes, and fine, fancy slices of ham- found us enjoying small but punchy portions on clean, pretty plates. While the mains were slightly more rustically filling, an eye had clearly been kept trained on inventiveness, flavour and presentation. There is only so much you can do to hussy up a vegetarian brisket though.
Hemelse Modder- which translates as Heavenly Mud- derives its name from its trademark dessert and you’re basically required by Dutch law to order a portion for your pudding.
A silky, decadent and giggly combination of dark and white chocolate mousses served with vanilla cream, this Hemelse Modder is rich without being heavy, and will tick and tickle all your chocolate boxes. Try to savour it and not to just shovel it down your throat like some sophisticated, affluent duck.
Hemelse Modder is a quality institution, with a great local reputation, but the prices remain reasonable. Three courses will cost you € 31,50, and a four course meal, which introduces a soup course after the starters, runs to € 36,00. You aren’t limited to the cheaper options either as the whole a la carte menu falls under the blanket of these offers.
There is also a menu for large groups, with three courses for the same € 31,50, though the choice is slightly abbreviated. Call ahead if there are a lot of you as we, but two small, quiet types, struggled to get a table when first we tried.
Friday night was absolutely bombed out with customers, to the point that they, try as they might and with sincere apologies, couldn’t squeeze our rain-soaked party of two in at all, regardless of our flexibility. Appointed with plenty of tables, homely but contemporary Hemelse Modder creaked less under the strain of its patrons when we returned on Saturday however, so if you’re a weekend diner that is perhaps the better choice.
Visitors needn’t worry about awkwardness, as Hemelse Modder has an open, friendly and gawk-free feel, so don't wimp out and go to McDonalds again. English menus are readily available (they will see you coming in your new Amsterdam hat) and the informal, professional staff all speak English with crystal clarity.
Bright and light, with a laid back, convivial atmosphere, Hemelse Modder delivers good-looking, tasty plates with the minimum of fuss and intrusion so you can just sit back, chat, drink and enjoy the top deck food. That sounds about right doesn’t it?
Our Rating: 
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Category Food and Drink, Travel |
It's the quiet ones you have to watch...
On general release in UK cinemas today (30 December) Michael Hazanavicius' The Artist comes highly recommended by critics, the good people at the Golden Globes and, it is assuredly predicted, by the voting members of the Academy, for The Artist is hotly tipped for Oscar glory. For what it’s worth, we like it too.
The Artist
may seem like an unlikely hit. A silent film, shot in black and white, re-telling a familiar story charting the scrambling decline of silent movie stars at the dawn of talking pictures does not much sound like the stuff of winter blockbusters.
Put to one side your fears of a dry academic exercise, or of parody and pastiche, because The Artist doesn’t feel old, exclusive and rehashed; it feels fresh, bold and, crucially, fun.
At the core of the film’s success is the performance of the film’s lead, Jean Dujardin, as George Valentin. Expressive, raffish, loveable and charming, Dujardin’s George is absolutely convincing and totally plausible as a silent movie star, moving gracefully from hoofing to clowning to the swash and buckle of a grainy, recreated action scene without disturbing a hair on his head or in his immaculate pencil moustache.
Dujardin is supported by a strong cast, with John Goodman as the affable but ruthless studio chief, James Cromwell as Valentin’s stoic valet, and by Bérénice Bejo as Valentin’s extra-marital love interest cum film rival Peppy Miller.
Bejo’s carefree depiction of Miller’s ascent from autograph hunter to chorus girl to overnight talkie sensation is every bit as satisfying as Dujardin’s turn, joyful, soulful and brimming with the irrepressible energy of youth.
Don’t be persuaded, by the critical acclaim and by the year on your Christmas calendar, that this is anything other than a silent film. While not academic, Hazanavicius' recreation of the silent era is studious and throughly researched.
Although he embraces modern techniques and equipment, resulting in a film which looks beautiful in crystal clear black and white, and occasionally springs a surprise or two, there is little effort to make things easier for a contemporary audience. The occasional dialogue is played out using the intertiles you’ll have seen parodied in silent movie spoofs, the ever-present soundtrack skitters along as though played by a live band, creating the tension and light relief where you might expect raised voices or sound effects, and old-fashioned fades and wipes are preferred to more modern editing techinques.
These are all deliberate and immersive choices though, and after a few minutes of feeling distracted and unnerved by the absence of dialogue and the unnatural-seeming techniques, you will be merrily esconced in the world of the film, and delighted, particularly by the knockabout first act in which Dujardin, and a scruffy but very talented dog get to show off their considerable gifts.
The Artist, like its central character George Valentin, isn’t just charming, funny and good-looking; Hazanavicius has some interesting things to say about star power and celebrity, and most tellingly about the value Hollywood places on novelty and what we lose, as storytellers, as a result.
With the business embracing the the spectacle of 3D, and its power to pull punters through the door, The Artist makes a statement that cinema can be visual without being shallow. If anything, the success (artistic, critical and one would assume commercial) of this brilliant, affecting resurrection of a prematurely dead medium proves that what is lost as a result of perceived progress and innovation can be too great a price to pay.
So, on this occasion, do take our word for it, go and see The Artist, be gripped, thrilled (and quiet) for just under two hours, and come out of the theatre electrified and walking on air. Just like they used to.
Our Rating:
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Category TV and Film |
Merry Christmas to everyone from the We Review Anything team (it's just me and her really). Thanks to everyone who contributed this year, everyone who stopped in to read our humble review offerings, and thanks to everyone who sent us products, samples and goody bags, especially The Northern Dough Co and the Pepsi/Doritos Fire & Ice team who spoiled us ambassadorially.
We're not done for 2011 yet though, quiet as it has been on here lately. We've been holidaying in Amsterdam, so expect some revews of hotels, restaurants and attractions from that most charmingly relaxed and picturesque of European capitals.
Also incoming are posts for our 2nd annual WRA Top 10 Albums of The Year, and a (glowing) review of Michel Hazanavicius' exquisite, delightful silent movie The Artist, which is out over the Christmas period and which we wholeheartedly recommend. It will warm your cockles and any other shellfish you've smuggled in to your local multiplex.
Please feel free to enjoy this picture of a Christmas puppy at your leisure.
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Category Uncategorized |
Prettily accented with strategic candlelight, Salford’s The Mark Addy, on the banks of the Irwell, makes unlikely elegance out of its exposed brickwork arches. Those who have seen it in the daylight in the aftermath of one of the restaurant’s semi-frequent adventures in flooding will know the Addy as a bit dank and grim, but on our visit, celebrating an anniversary, it felt romantic, intimate and informal.
It is tough to review a restaurant where so much of the menu is unavailable. Put it down to the timing of our visit, at the start of December we perhaps crashed into The Mark Addy’s oncoming Christmas menu, but with two of our chosen starters, of Pressed Brawn and Piccalilli and the Shrimp Soup, and two of our preferred main courses, Sticky Dandelion & Burdock Roast Duck and a Smoked Mackerel Fillet, withdrawn we were left a little short of choice. The service, hung out to dry a bit, was good nonetheless, friendly and knowledgeable, as it had to be as we ummed, aahed and scrambled to find second and third choices.
From the unexpectedly abbreviated menu we took on starters of Air Dried Beef with Organic Salford Honey Plum Chutney and Beetroot Cured Var Salmon with Horseradish Cream. Each dish was fine, but stripped back to the bones was ultimately just a cold meat plate, dressed with a refined condiment.
The beef had a lovely sweet, chewy quality, like fine slices of gummy biltong. The salmon, for its part, was a good quality fish cut, but the benefits of its having been cured in beetroot were sadly not apparent.
Of our of two mains, eventually arrived at by means of a figurative tossed coin, one was fair and the other a real disappointment.
Our order of Mutton with Celeriac Caper Cream and Nodding Pudding ticked all the appropriate boxes. The mutton had been slow cooked to a melting, creamy silkiness and was light in texture and flavourful. Points too for a fun, interesting potato side in the form of the nodding pudding, essentially a golden fried mash.
Our Fillets of Fluke with Dry Cured Bacon, Periwinkles & Garlic was weak however. The fluke failed to stand for itself, and liberally seasoned, clashed with the already salty quality of the bacon lardons. A vague garlic butter did little to improve things.
The final insult was a scattering of unwinkled winkles, served in their shells without an apparent means of getting at the chewy flesh within. Eventually, we figured out that maybe we were supposed to be snapping bits from the decorative fish bone, which had been served jutting from the plate like a spectral Mohawk, and using those as makeshift cocktail sticks.
We did, greasing up our fingers in the process, and we managed to messily pry a couple of the winkles free of their salty housing. A meal though is not a puzzle in an adventure game and shouldn’t be served as such. Winkle my winkles please!
The Mark Addy specialises in attempting to make culinary high art out of traditional ingredients, black puddings, offal cuts and river fish, but here it felt a little like the quirky spinning of these old Lancastrian ingredients resulted in a case of the Emperor’s new food.
Everything was a little bland and indistinct, in delivery a real fall from the expectations of foodie alchemy conjured up by the almost impenetrably quaint and queer menu. Something like wandering into Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and finding that Tropicalifrajilistic Whizzpopper is just some half-chewed Hubba Bubba.
A shared Dark Chocolate and Cinder Toffee Terrine at least ended the night on a high. With one arm round an indulgent chocolate mousse and the other messing about in the knickers of a Cadbury’s Crunchie, this small, potent dessert was rich, naughty and exciting but, for about a fiver a throw, could maybe have done with a creamy Crème anglaise or something like it on the plate too.
Our Rating: 
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Category Food and Drink, Manchester |
Boasting a chef once of Manchester heavyweight Stock, and set on the Locks alongside populist money-spinner Albert's Shed, Twisted Med seems all set up for success. It's not quite there yet though.
Squeezed in beneath one of Castlefield Locks’ distinctive railway arches, New Manchester food venture Twisted Med offers, as the restaurant’s name so ham-fistedly suggests, a contemporary tweak on the classic Mediterranean we know and love so well.
A small operation, the upstairs neighbour to ground floor bar Bohemia, Twisted Med fills its limited floor space with a handful of booths and a scattering of other tables, all of which were occupied at the time of our visit.
The restaurant’s modern finish, which shines and subtly twinkles, suits an atmosphere of bubbly young professionalism full of chatter and expensive, unflattering haircuts; some of the angular glassware and crockery rather spoilt the effect though, an ugly, awkward egg too many in an otherwise tasteful bowl.
If the decor is a little spare and impersonal then the fine service and warm welcome, replete with a complimentary bowl of olives, more than make up for it.
Patient while we dallied over our order, quick to our table when we needed something and relaxed enough to let us pour our own wine (a feat which we were miraculously able to perform unaided), the service, toeing admirably the tightrope between attentive and invasive, was everything we look for when dining out.
We ordered starters of Goat's Cheese on a Toasted Crostini with Caramelised Red Onion and the Mango and Crayfish Tower.
The goat's cheese dish was well executed if not an especially twirly and inventive take on this simple classic.
My mango and crayfish tower, something of a house speciality, was the evening’s zenith, sweet and salty in flavour and with smooth, cool textures, complimented by the crunch of a small side salad and the tart zing of some balsamic ‘spiders’. It looked pretty, clean and orderly, and, fresh and light, tasted even better.
We had, when selecting our mains, a reviewer’s duty to give those dishes to which the restaurant had lent their ‘Twisted’ name a spin. These should, logic suggests, be Twisted Med’s flagship menu items, combining the best of quality and the inventiveness their brand implies.
The Twisted Med Fish-Skewer plundered the sea, in the best Mediterranean tradition, lining up scallops, black tiger prawns and salmon on a wooden skewer- like an expensively assembled table football front line de la mer.
A little brash in concept, like a caviar-stuffed lobster, the two small skewers, which each contain one of each of the component ingredients, were deliciously salty, buttery and powerfully full of fish flavours.
The skewers were a little under-proportioned on a plate subsumed by an invasion of fat, space-gobbling chips. Though not a clever or elegant bit of plate design the chips were at least pleasingly crunchy without being dry.
A forgettable salad further cluttered up the plate, while a lime aioli was a fair stab at injecting a bit of lift into the usual mustard-mayonnaise dipping sauce. Lending a light hit of citric sharpness, the aioli was not delivered with quite enough conviction, and ultimately we wouldn’t have missed it.
The Twisted Med Lamb – marinated cutlets served in a bowl on top of chorizo, lamb strips and a bed of vegetables, with a marsala jus – delighted for the first few bites.
The cutlets were rich, moist and beautifully cooked, while the other little pearls of meat which we had to truffle out from beneath a huge, neatly presented swelling of food, added a chewier, smokier flavour to each mouthful. The marsala jus, which had kissed the cutlets on its way to forming a pool at the bottom of the bowl left a delicate sweet tang and an earthy ripe richness. It was all looking very rosy.
The Twisted Med Lamb, however, deviated from its path to greatness. The pooled marsala sauce, too voluminously delivered, gradually overpowered the dish as we started to add the carrots, baby onions and potatoes from the lower recesses of the bowl into the mix. Everything had become covered in the marsala jus which in turn became a claggy chore to wade through. The lamb, poor thing, could not ultimately compete. It was not far from hitting the very centre of the mark though.
Our desserts of Chocolate Brownie and Orange Flower and Almond Halwa, steeply priced at over £5, came in ample measures. The brownie, served with hazlenuts and ice cream was decadent and moist, a world away from cellophane wrapped supermarket imitators.
The Halwa, sort of a light, fragrant sponge, was the champion dessert though. Served with pistachio ice cream and decorated prettily with candied orange this unusual treat was blissfully airy and sweet and, though the ice cream lacked a bit of personality, its cool creaminess added balance alongside the crunch of the crushed nuts.
With its very-nearly-there food and solid staff, aligned with its location among one of central Manchester’s more picturesque areas, Twisted Med is on the way to being a restaurant to recommend.
Our Rating:
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Category Food and Drink, Manchester |
