Fish and Seafood

I was working in Holland for a day and my colleagues from the Dutch office recommended Visaandeschelde as a delicious lunch place. Visaandeschelde is a fish and seafood restaurant and the main chef and owner Michiel Deenik has a wonderful motto “A day without good food is a day lost”, which I truly agree with. The restaurant seats 60 people and when we arrived there shortly past 12 for our lunch it was buzzing and almost all the seats were full, but as we had booked a table we were shown to one of the last available tables. The interior was very fun, it had white tablecloths so on one side it was formal, but it had cool big mirrors decorated with various sea objects in blue and the whole restaurant felt lively and welcoming.
 

The Harbour Club is a mini chain with restaurants in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Scheveningen and also now in Ibiza, their latest venue which they only opened this summer. The Rotterdam Harbour club opened in 2010 in the former premises of ‘Parkzicht’, a one- hundred-year-old villa in one of Rotterdam’s city parks, and the atmosphere there is superb. I went here with my two friends Cornelis and Rob and it was a sunny day and it was such a pleasure to sit outside and look at the green and quiet park whilst eating our meal.

The restaurant has black chairs and white tablecloth tables and the dominant colour in the restaurant is white and according to their website their decor should remind you of “The Boathouse Café” in Central Park, New York, but as I have not been there, I can’t really comment if these places were indeed similar. We were sitting outside but the inside of the restaurant is divided up into a number of separate rooms, ie the Sushi Lounge, the upstairs terrace.

This restaurant is named after a cat, The Savoy’s resident cat (a 3ft high feline sculpture) and the restaurant is located on the ground floor of the Savoy Hotel. The Savoy Hotel, post its redecoration, is just wonderful with a few dining areas and bars spread across the hotel, and Kaspar’s can be found straight ahead when you walk into the Savoy hotel and offers lovely views of the Thames (which I had a chance to see as I was sitting by one of the window tables). The restaurant is decorated in a wonderful aqua blue colour, and there is a bar with seafood on display in the middle of the room. Just like being in the Savoy Hotel, the whole dining experience at Kaspar’s seems very grand.

I went to Boston as my boyfriend was running the Boston marathon and a few months before I had already found all the restaurants I wanted to visit in Boston and had booked them, with the exception of Neptune Oyster, that you could not book, but I was very keen to try. I love the US seafood restaurants that offer anything from jumbo prawns to chowders, and I was researching these before my trip and Neptune Oyster seemed to be one of the best if not the best in Boston.

The Frommers travel guide as well as my small guide to Puerto Rico recommended to go to Aguaviva, so despite the fact I knew this was not a traditional Puerto Rican restaurant which I really wanted to go to and try the local food, I decided to go there to see if it really is as good as the travel guides were saying. Aguaviva is one of the restaurants owned by the “Oof! Group” and they seem to own the most trendy restaurants in Puerto Rico. Aguaviva was opened in 2002 and specialises in  “Seaside Latino Cuisine” and besides the main dining area also has a ceviche and oyster bar in front of the open kitchen. It was a short walk from our hotel to Aguaviva and when we entered I loved the interior of the restaurant. The restaurant is decorated in blue shades and has jellyfish type of decorations hanging from the ceiling.