Olijf

Turning the corner onto Mallemolen, I would not have expected to find this busy food street hidden away. Olijf sits on this street with many other restaurants and they serve Mediterranean small dishes that is organic or sustainably produced. With these amazing ingredients, you would think the food was also too… but I was sadly disappointed. The food was under-​seasoned and overall uninspired.
Food: ²⁄₅
The dishes are small and for most people, 2 dishes would be needed for a full meal. Which is probably why they offer a 3 course menu which includes dessert for € 28.50 per person. The dishes sounded tasty: oven roasted sea bass with grilled asparagus, iberico filet with red wine sauce, lamb rack with mushroom risotto. However, all the food was rather bland and uninspired. The sea bass was lacking in salt and the asparagus had not been properly peeled so the outer skin was still on and made it difficult to chew. The dessert however was very tasty, I had the pastel de nata (a Portuguese egg custard pastry) and the outer shell was perfectly crunchy and flaky. It wasn’t too sweet and I would have liked more of it! That is why it got 2 stars instead of 1, the dessert saved it.
Service: ³⁄₅
The waitress was polite and fairly efficient. It is a small restaurant and there was only 2 other tables there.
Atmosphere: ³⁄₅
Not much to say about it… it was a small restaurant so it can feel very intimate. However, some of the decorations were placed in rather strange locations. There was a piece of wood placed right behind our seats so we ended up knocking it over a few times.
Value: ²⁄₅
You can eat a lot better food elsewhere for € 30 (and there are plenty of other choices on that street).