The first ‘nocsta and friends: Food Adventure’ Izakaya Tanuki, in Amstelveen. I had great ideas of doing this, but forgot all about it and just had a very good dinner with friends. I have not seen them in a long while, so it was just great to have fun and enjoy the moment.

The Idea of Food Adventure comes from a Youtube channel, Justkiddingfilms. The channel shows a group of friends making video-content on youtube and one of their video-topics are their Food Adventures. The JKF-group will often make a video of a foodie-hotspot where they showcase the delicious foods of the establishment they visit.

The videos are entertainment that I enjoy to watch and I wanted to have something similar. That’s why I started with this new blog subject of Naf:fa, (food and friends). At the moment I am just starting out, so bear with my materials for now. I hope to gradually to create something like a photo blog content and eventually video content.

Izakaya Tanuki

Amstelveen has one of the largest Japanese community in the Netherlands and is not that strange to find a hidden gem inside the Dutch horeca-landscape filled with All-you-can-eat-Sushi places. (horeca is the dutch term for the HOtel, REstaurant and CAtering service industry.)

Izakaya: is like a tavern, but Japanese style. Tanuki has a definitely a modern Japanese feel to it, with a Japanese looking building. It has his own garden which you walk through it from the main-entrance to the sliding door entrance. Follow through  on the inside, the restaurant contains an open kitchen with bar seatings and regular chair-and-tables seatings, at the wall-side in a L-shape are the tatami style seatings with boxed in tables.

The dinning style is somewhat different than you would expect. The menu has a lot to offer and ranges from various Japanese dishes, like [sushi and sashimi] cold dishes to [karage] fried dishes and [yakitori, ramen] warm dishes. The style of ordering is similar to all-you-can-eat but without the rounds or filling some paper or pc-tablet. Old-skool style with your waiter/waitress on paper and pen. And it can be done whenever you like to order from the menu.

That night we had some fresh made sushi’s. The rice of the nigiri and maki sushi’s were at the right warm temperature and the fish toppings were freshly cut and layed on top.
We ordered various skewers to share, from yakitori (chicken skewers) to other kushiyaki (meat and vegetables skewers). The Tsukune or chicken meatballs were interesting a different way of what you normally would expect of yakitori. Other skewers which were nice are the Gyutan or cows tongue. Cow tongue needs to be grilled well or it will be really tough like chewing on a leather belt.

The dishes of Izakaya Tanuki that I liked the most that day were two meat dishes. The first one is the Japanese fried Chicken or better known as the Tori Karage. The dish what we had was the Wakadori No Kara Age described as Japanese style marinated chicken. The meat was very tender and the chunks of chicken were huge. The next dish was the MVD (play on MVP) of the night, The Wafu Steak. We ordered it two times and if we had known it was that good from the start, we would have ordered it more times. The beef dish was sharable and it was deliciously good and done well. Seriously yummy tender steak and I was able to enjoy it multiple times with every piece that’s on the plate.

It was nice to have a good quality meal with my friends. Although this time I haven’t made a lot of food pics, on the next naffa I will show a more foodporn post with lots and lots of food pictures.

Until next time, Like, share and Keep Experimenting!