Posted by: doc
The city founded by the Dutch finally has a Dutch restaurant. It's NL, for the Netherlands, and it starts with a tremendous advantage: virtually no one has the slightest idea what Dutch cuisine is. In a bleak essay on the food of the Netherlands, the Oxford Companion to Food singles out stamppot (mashed potatoes and vegetables) and pap as the country's two crowning glories. Cheese, pancakes and beer are probably the only culinary contributions that have made any international impression.

NL does not serve pap. This is modernized Dutch food, jazzed up with ingredients like apple chips, infused oils and American iceberg lettuce. The stamppot is mashed potatoes with arugula. Starters include a salad with rollmops of tuna, asparagus and remoulade sauce; smoked tenderloin with Old Amsterdam cheese and a basil-flavored yogurt cream; and herring tartare with apple chips and beet salad with a soy-citrus vinaigrette. Two traditional soups deserve attention, a tangy mustard soup from the Zaan region, with slivers of scallion, and koninginnensoep, or queen's soup, a hearty chicken soup with noodles and winter vegetables


NL, 169 Sullivan Street, near Houston Street, Greenwich Village; (212) 387-8801. Dinner entrees, $18 to $25


http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/26/living/26JOUR.html

-Mark

posted January 26, 2001 16:16