Frank’s Smoke House

J’ai pris du «warmed» smoked salmon, testé pour Noël.
Certes, c’est cher, même TRES CHER, mais bonnon né lesigne pas sur la qualité.
Le saumon était excellent! Pas du tout sec, qui sentait bien le goût de fumée.
La petite boutique propose plein de produits de la mer (et même du camembert, allez comprendre pourquoi!!), frais ou fumés.
L’avantage pour ceux qui vouagent c’est que les produits sont sous vide!

If you like all things smoked, this is the place for you! Try Frank’s smoked shrimps, for example. Once you tried one, you’re hooked for life.

High quality smoked fish winkel in Amsterdam that I was finally able to visit because of their limited hours.
Splurge:
*The Alaskan Chinook Salmon is a treat at € 8,50/100g, so sweet that it’s almost like candy.
*I thought the smoked Halibut at € 7/​100g had a delicate taste, but just not worth it.
Hidden gems:
*Smoked mackerel for € 3,60/half fish that blew everything out of the water. Best smoked mackerel in the country.
*Smoked shrimp. Seriously, just try them and you’ll never go back. Makes me think of Calumet in Chicago.

I moved here from Chicago, and came to this place looking for a wide variety of smoked meats that reminded me of home. The only smoked meat I found here was biltong, which is a South African beef jerky that is like 3x thicker than regular beef jerky and isn’t made with sugar, only savory herbs. It’s delicious, but it’s so thick that you may find yourself drooling down your shirt while trying to gnaw off a chunk.
I also tried their pastrami sandwich, which was delicious but a little weird. The bread was sort of sad and dry, and they put small pickles inside the sandwich, which is good because the sandwich needed all the moisture it could get. I fortified it with more mustard when I got it back home, but it was still good eating.
Everything else in the store when I went in was fish related. Dried fish, fresh fish, smoked fish, fish soup, fish cake, fish paste, caviar, giant crab legs, etc., etc. I wasn’t in the mood for fish so I didn’t try any of that stuff, but next time I’m in the mood for fishiness I’ll be back.

I had tweeted during a recent trip to Amsterdam that I was having my mind blown at Frank’s Smoke House, and you can expect the types of responses I got.
Despite what Amsterdam is known for by many foreign visitors, Frank’s Smoke House is NOT a coffeeshop, but specializes in something else that’s hard to come by in the rest of Europe: Alaskan salmon.
Living in Paris, the firm, orange-​tinged flesh of Pacific Northwest sockeye salmon is but a distant dream, a rich memory of a past life on the west coast of the United States. The occasional wild North Atlantic salmon makes its way onto my dinner plate or sushi platter, but more often than not I’m turning my nose up at the farmed stuff.
So imagine my absolute pleasure when my wife dug up information on Frank’s, and my subsequent fish-​gasm, if you will, upon getting there and seeing the hundreds of real Alaskan salmon bellies hanging in the back room. That, ladies and gentlemen, was how my mind was blown.
I normally try to eat local, organic, and all that other stuff. But I’ll easily sacrifice my foodie principles for one bite of delicious sockeye salmon from halfway across the world. A small Chinook smoked sockeye salmon broodtje (sandwich on a roll) isn’t exactly cheap at € 7, but it’s so worth the price for a subtle wave of salmony flavor you simply don’t come across in this part of the globe. I don’t even want to calculate what the carbon offset would cost, but it’s still worth it.
On top of that, the service is friendly and despite having a bit of a cold cafeteria setting there’s a somewhat «gezellig» vibe to the joint, with lots of locals stopping in to buy varieties of smoked fish, fish eggs, and other things that would go nicely on a buffet table.
The lovely lady behind the counter at the time told us that Frank himself is originally from Maryland –hence the Maryland crab cakes in the deli case. I’ll be trying those next time, if I’m not stuffing my gob full of sockeye.