De Waaghals, Amsterdam

Sometimes it's hard finding good vegetarian food when you're away, the last time we went to Amsterdam I'm pretty sure we just ate pizza for the whole weekend (not that I'm complaining, I could eat pizza forever). So even though we decided to book this trip a few days before we actually went, I did some research to try and find good veggie restaurant to try. The only one that stuck out to me was De Waaghals, it had positive reviews on trip advisor and the menu sounded great. So I tried to book online, which wasn't very successful, but we just turned up in the end and explained that we'd tried to book. The guy was really apologetic and said they'd booked us on the wrong day and offered us a table anyway.

Now this review may be slightly biased as we'd just come from the Heineken experience (it's veggie, don't you know) and I was feeling pretty merry. Now if you've been to the Heineken experience and are thinking that it's a bit ridiculous that I was feeling it after two tiny beers, you are correct. But I'm a massive lightweight; I was once sick after drinking only one cider the night before (although it may have also had something to do with the fact I'd been jumping on my bed before work). Any way, I was in a very good mood when we got there and when the food (and more alcohol) arrived the good feelings continued. The restaurant was fairly busy, but there was a few tables left at 7pm. It had a really chilled out environment which made it nice and comfortable. There was also a rather large cat sleeping in the corner, who only got up to be fussed by diners and then let out to play with some other cats, this increased my meal enjoyability by about 150%.

My Classic Dish 

From what I gather from the website and other reviews the menu changes every two weeks, which is great as it means you can try something different each time. Obviously we'd only be going once, but there was still a lot of choice including a Thai dish. We stared off with bread, which I don't really need to go in to detail on, it was good, bready and buttery. For the main meal I had spinach, chard and Parmesan soufflé, crispy fried polenta with sage butter, grilled giant mushroom with green herbs, baked potatoes with green asparagus and a red wine and tomato sauce, sprinkled with black olives. Every single part of this dish was phenomenal, even the dreaded mushroom! My favourite part was the soufflé, it was bright green, fresh, cheesy and delicious.

Mr Hefs Spring Dish

I was with my boyfriend who as you may know hates vegetables and was not too happy about being dragged to a vegetarian restaurant, but even he was delighted when his food came. As he said, if it's well presented and looks edible he'll eat it. He had the braised creamy turnip tops and tomato pappardelle with broad bean sauce, bread crumbs, marinated buffalo mozzarella with basil and olive oil and baked carrots in garlic and ended up really enjoying it. I tried some (of course) and it was just as nice as mine, creamy pasta with fresh garlicy carrots, yum! I think what made it so delicious was that both of the dishes had such a variety of textures and tastes on the plate. It made every bite slightly different and full of flavour.

Another plus point of the restaurant was that it had a great selection of comics, incase you get bored of talking to your partner. Although he couldn't read them as they were in Dutch, my boyfriend had great fun deciphering what was going on and explaining it to me. 

Mr Hef reading some Tin Tin at dinner.

De Waaghals is quite expensive at around £18 for the main meals, but it is definitely worth it. So if you're ever in Amsterdam definitely put this on your agenda!

Posted in: resturants