A foodie date with Gülşen

EN A couple of weeks I had a foodie date with my old schoolmate and friend Gülşen (hiya!) in my favorite Dutch city Rotterdam. You might have seen Gülşen before in this post were me and her were in a canoe! Anyway this time me and Gülşen have decided to take a relaxing one with food and good talks only where I also had the privilege to take Gülşen on her first dim sum/yum cha as well (and yes she's fan!)! Read it all below.

NL Een paar weken terug had ik een foodie-date met een oude klasgenoot en vriendin Gülşen (hoi!) in mijn favoriete stad Rotterdam. Misschien ken je Gülşen in een eerdere blogpost waar we samen gingen kanoën! Dit keer hebben we besloten om het wat rustig aan te doen en ons richten op lekker eten en goede gesprekken. Ook mocht ik Gülşen onder andere meenemen voor haar eerste keer dim sum/yumcha (en ja ze is fan!)! Lees het allemaal hieronder.

❝Zweef de cursor voor Nederlandse vertaling!

Lunch

Down with dim sum! It was also G. first dim sum as well. I gotta take her to an authentic restaurant of course which was at the Grand Garden in Rotterdam. Which was also my first time eating at this place too.

(the bottomline: G. likes to dim sum, woo!)

Grand Garden - Rotterdam - The Netherlands

Since G. was new to dim sum, the ordering of food was all on me. Well no problem at all! Since dim sum for beginners like G. herself can be quite overwhelming and so I chose dim sum dishes that are innocent and delicious.

Warming up and dealing with the chopsticks before the real deal is about to happen.

And don`t worry I slip sometimes too. These deep fried shrimps in a crispy coating were delicious by the way!

We also ordered:

Guys, behold, these are durian tarts and were pretty good! I was so surprised that Grand Garden had it on their menu!

Coffee break

After the dim sum lunch I took G. for a nice strong cup of Vietnamese coffee! Which was also G. first timer too.

Little V - Rotterdam - The Netherlands

And Little V just became my favorite new Vietnamese restaurant and all I had there was Vietnamese coffee. I mean, the interior only is beyond already and makes me feel like I am in some Asian country for a second. We didn`t order any food because me and G. were still full of the dim sum.

Even their restroom was worth picture snapping. #becauseiamweird

Time for coffee!

Vietnamese coffee in a special slow dripper with a layer of sweet condensed milk, delish!

Din din

Our final stop of our foodie date was also at a new restaurant called `Kaapse Maria`. I`m not so impressed by their food but their building and window views are surely my favorite feature.

Kaapse Maria - Rotterdam - The Netherlands

It turns out that the Kaapse Maria is a bar-restaurant kind of thing is and serves a quite big variations of beer, wine and other alcoholic. Me and G. were not that much of a drinker and so we ordered soda: lemon & cardamom and strawberry with tarragon herb. I had the strawberry with tarragon and even though this combination is quite odd but o boy. It was very delicious and refreshing and I bet it would taste a lot better in a hot Summer day too!

We ordered:

1 vegetarian scallops 1 in boter gebraden platvis met pittige dip

Vegetarian scallops When they are called `vegetarian` scallops and I am a vegetarian, I want to know what it`s made of. Turns out it was made of... daikon! I like this concept dish because it`s creative though the huge dollop of miso paste was way to salty making the dish way out of balance.

Butter pan seared flatfish Kaapse Maria uses fishes that are accidentally caught in the mass fishing industry which would be thrown and wasted away. Me and G. were eating a enviromentally friendly fish! The fish was cooked quite good but I find the spicy broth dip a quite missmatch.