New in Amsterdam: Street Food at Jackson Dubois and Takeaways from Dis

Please note that since writing this article, Jackson Dubois has closed down

Yes, “New in Amsterdam” is currently code for “slightly sponsored (not in money but in food) post but I’ve not yet got around to creating a category for this”. Made even more confusing this week by the fact that my thoughts about Dis were fully funded by me – it just happens to be new, and in Amsterdam. No one ever said food bloggers had to be consistent, right? (Oh, wait, I probably said that myself…)

Jackson Dubois

I was given a sort of voucher for Jackson Dubois by their PR agency a few weeks ago, so the Honey Badger and I set out to do what we do best: eat and drink about it. Worth pointing out: Jackson Dubois is the evening incarnation of what is Caffe Esprit during the day. It makes perfect sense that whoever owns the place would want to make use of such prime real estate for as many hours of the day as possible, so it’s only surprising no one thought of this sooner. And Mr Dubois does a credible job of transforming the space into something more “evening-y” after the sun goes down.

The menu concept is street food, which means the kitchen produces small shareable dishes from all over the world. Think Mexican tacos, Italian pizzas, American burgers, Middle Eastern falafel, Vietnamese spring rolls, and some obligatory Dutch bitterballen. As you’d expect with so many ingredients and such different cooking styles flying around the same kitchen, the results are mixed. My favourites were the beef tacos, which came with a good salsa and were properly spicy. Also top of my list was the roti roll, which was full of flavour and pepped up with some nose-runningly hot Madame Jeanette peppers. The pizzas were overly thick and greasy – presumably due to a lack of wood-fired oven and low quality salami. The spring rolls were generously filled, but the dipping sauce was far too sweet and lacked any kind of lime/chilli kick. Lobster buns seemed like a waste of an expensive piece of seafood – I could taste everything except the lobster.

Prices are fairly reasonable for the centre of town, and Jackson Dubois has a huge drinks menu if you’re warming up for a big night out. But personally I’m not a fan of one kitchen trying to do too many different things – it’s just a recipe for the quality to be mediocre.

Dis – Dinner Shop

On that odd stretch of street between the Haarlemmerplein and the Nassauplein, I’d watched Dis take shape over the course of a month or two because it’s on my route into town. It calls itself a “dinner shop”, which I guess means it’s not really a restaurant (not least because you can’t actually sit down and eat in the place) so I can’t really review it as such. But it’s certainly new: it’s essentially a takeaway concept, but one in which you turn up and take a look at the dishes (pre-prepared and sitting over hotplates) rather than ordering them from a menu for delivery.

The dishes are pretty Dutch – in the loosest sense. Wednesday was gehaktbaldag (meatball day), although looking at their menu it appears every day is gehaktbaldag. You can also buy chilli con (or possibly sin) carne, lasagne, roast chicken… the kinds of dishes that are so international they’ve become local. It’s not hugely creative, but the quality is good and it’s handy to be able to pick something up on your way home if you can’t be bothered to cook. However, the couple of times I’ve been in there the selection has been identical – and you’ll no doubt get bored of the same choice of seven dishes for dinner after a short while.

If you’ve had a particularly bad (or good) day, you can buy all sorts of wine and beer there – which I hope works out for Dis as I don’t see how they can make much profit on €7.50 meals for the people in the neighbourhood. At lunchtime, they also serve sandwiches for €4 and salads for €7.50. I tried a “Mediterranean mince” salad with roasted carrots and barley. I wasn’t thrilled by it (then again I rarely am when it comes to salads in the Netherlands) but it kept me full-ish till dinner.

My one piece of advice for Dis, if they happen to be reading this, would be to add a few tables and chairs so people can eat in. It’s a huge space that’s presumably not cheap to rent, and encouraging people to sit and order dessert, wine or coffee would surely up their profit margins. But of course there may be licensing laws for the building that I don’t know about.

The foodie verdict? Dis has a time and a place (in my case, that time was 8.50 pm after a Pilates class) but it’s unlikely to tempt me away from cooking at home…