People often think that the best food needs to be pretentious. There is a perceived wisdom that the smaller the plate, the more intricate the decoration, the more varied the ingredients, the better the food will be.
Well, this customer doesn’t subscribe to that view. I can’t count the number of times I have been frantically Googling foods under the table, from a menu that I don’t understand, as a waiter approaches to take my order! Sometimes the menu just has one word: ‘potato’ and you have to try and work out all the possibilities this could be. Baked? Mashed? Dauphinoise? Air Fried? Chips? Will anything else come with my potato? Should I order some meat as a side with the potato?
Inevitably what arrives is so far from my image of a potato, I have no idea how the item could even be labelled as such, with so many processes applied to the original potato it no longer resembles the humble spud.
Often I leave pretentious places unsatisfied; craving a bite into a big juicy burger, as I walk past a well known fast food restaurant down the road from where I have spent a lot of money on a beautiful meal. Why? Because however delicious the food is, as I look down eagerly at the plate, my face (and stomach) falls as I see there is but one tiny bite.
An exquisite morsel to be sure, but a ‘morsel’ nonetheless. Gone before you have even managed to properly taste it. You go in again, eager for more, but the plate is empty, with just a few bubbles of sad potato foam at the bottom. And the trend towards small ‘sharing plates’ adds even more stress. My dining companion is now my adversary for the tiny amount of food on the plate(s). Who will get there first? How can we cut the already tiny cube of beetroot into smaller cubes? Many a friendship has faltered at the sharing plate test (for any Friends fans out there I give major - ‘Joey doesn’t share food!’ vibes).
So I was intrigued when my favourite BBQ place in Haarlem announced they were doing a pop up at the old Dodici venue. Would my go to comfort food be whittled down to a single bite? I imagined a plate with a tiny quenelle of macaroni cheese with a thin slither of brisket artfully draped on the plate, with a brush of BBQ sauce on the bottom. Would the generous BBQ trays they were known for give me the same feeling when transferred to a fine dining setting?
I need not have worried. When we walked into the cosy restaurant the old school hip hop tunes beckoned, immediately indicating that although the venue had changed, the identity of Brikett Smokehouse had not. The menu had some old favourites on it; brisket of course, mashed potato with a red onion jam and pulled pork bitterballen (I can never go back to the original Dutch bitterballen after these- sorry!), but also had new exciting items such as padron peppers and oysters with a bourbon gel.
Usually you will find Brikett once a month at Lokaal, where their BBQ trays are served with a selection of craft beers. Here, at Dodici, the bartender crafted matching cocktails. Classic bourbon drinks with a twist, using smoky flavours and even beef tallow to compliment the dishes. Unfortunately neither me or my husband drink bourbon, so we didn’t sample them (a plea for a gin based one next time!?), but those around us raved about them. However, the option to combine our meal with delicious wines saved the day, as Dodici have a wide selection of wines available by the glass.
We ordered the starters: padron peppers, smoked salmon with a dill mayonnaise and pulled pork bitterballen. Absolutely delicious. Classics such as padron peppers are given a new twist with the signature Brikett rub and a smoked garlic aioli to dip. The salmon is cold smoked by Brikett themselves and is vibrant and fresh. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a pulled pork bitterbal (trust me!). So far so good with the size of the plates, my marriage was safe. I was ready for the next course!
The mains arrived. In my last blog I shared how my favorite course is dessert, but I also have another confession to make: I am an over-orderer. I panic. I want to try everything. I worry I’ll miss out if I don’t order that extra little side dish. My husband hates this and is embarrassed when the waiters keep coming with dish after dish, trying to squeeze them onto a table for two as I awkwardly explain ‘oh yes also for us thanks’. He complains that he never leaves a restaurant with me without feeling he’s going to burst (guess you’re starting to understand why I hate the small fine dining plates so much!).
I do the same here. I want one of everything (apart from the cauliflower steak). We get the Brisket, the chicken lollipops, the pork rib, mashed potato and fennel salad. I may have even forgotten something else that we managed to squeeze on the table- ah yes- ribs of sweetcorn! I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t have to worry about going home thinking about a burger. The food exploded with flavour, the genius of the chef being the understanding that if you have a fatty rich meat then the perfect accompaniment is pickled vegetables to cut through and lift the flavours. Although the concept was sharing plates, the portions were generous. The brisket was the best I have ever had from them, melting on my tongue with barely a need to chew. The pork rib was soft and tender, but still packed full of that smokey BBQ flavour and loaded up with the sauerkraut and BBQ sauce it was the perfect bite. The chicken lollypop coated in the rich buffalo sauce brought the heat to the table and paired perfectly with the sweet creamy mashed potato.
As I nibbled the last of the smoky corn off the last rib I sighed with happiness. This was some of the most flavoursome food I had ever had, packed full of spices, smoke and sweetness, and it wasn’t pretentious. I didn’t have to look up lots of words or techniques. I wasn’t scraping the plate with my spoon, desperate for a morsel more. It was like a warm comforting hug, whilst still feeling like high dining. I was able to indulge in a rich tempranillo red wine with my mains and pair my rocky road brownie (of course I squeezed in dessert and it was worth it!) with a sweet dessert wine. It felt special, but also generous and fun and quite frankly some of the most delicious meat I have ever had. When the bill arrived the price was half what we had recently paid at a fine dining restaurant in Haarlem, but the food was twice as good.
A little birdie tells me that there are more Brikett Smokehouse pop ups planned at Dodici’s old restaurant site. Keep your ears peeled… this is not one to be missed!
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