Vegan-friendly at Yerba
Everyone wants to live more consciously, healthily and better. The chances that you or someone in your group of friends eats plant-based are increasing by the day. If you all want to go out for dinner, this can sometimes cause problems. One person is vegan, another gluten-free and another carnivorous—try finding a restaurant that caters to all of them. You’re in luck, because I’ve already done it for you. From now on, you can reserve a table for your colourful group at Yerba in Amsterdam.
At Yerba, you eat plant forward. This means that vegetables take centre stage and the dishes are almost all vegan. You choose from three, four, five or six courses, ranging from €34 to €49. Still craving fish, meat or dairy? Some dishes come with a suggestion, which you get completely free of charge. This could be a sous-vide egg yolk, but also wild goose pastrami. In any case, the origin is 100 per cent traceable.
Pleasantly surprised
Let me start by saying that I’m anything but vegan. I love vegetables and often eat vegetarian, but you can make me just as happy with a deep-fried chicken wing and even happier with a generous knob of butter. Vegan restaurants therefore rarely, if ever, enjoy my presence. Okay, never. But at Yerba, I’m pleasantly surprised.
It’s all about vegetables
Chef Walter Marskamp previously worked at Wilde Zwijnen, one of my favourites, and does eat meat and fish himself. He and his wife Sally Mitchell follow an 80/20 principle of plant-based and animal ingredients at home. They apply this in the restaurant kitchen too. Instead of a piece of meat being the centrepiece of the meal, everything revolves around vegetables. The fact that they know how delicious animal products can be works in their favour. They know exactly which flavours the meatlover is looking for and create dishes that make everyone happy.
Crispy beignets
To start, we eat crispy deep-fried courgette beignets with broccoli and soy yoghurt mixed with dill and a huge amount of garlic. The yoghurt sauce is fresh and sharp, which goes well with the rich beignets, wonderfully seasoned. A very good start. Next, we get salt-baked celeriac with fermented kohlrabi, leek, dukah and beer mustard. When I say that mustard would be bloody delicious on an ossenworst sandwich, the health bloggers around me give me a strange look. But hey, it really is the truth. It’s wonderfully sweet and coarse; I’d happily have a whole jar of it.
Tofu chocolate mousse
Secretly, I’ve been looking forward to dessert the whole time: silken tofu chocolate mousse. Silken tofu is my favourite, and I’ve seen contestants on MasterChef Australia make cheesecake with it. As you can imagine, I’m incredibly curious. The mousse is amazingly delicious and so creamy that I still wonder whether there really isn’t any whipped cream in it. But no, the creamy texture comes from the tofu.
As many dishes as possible
When I get home after lunch, I make some noodles with spring-onion oil for myself, because I’m not really full. And that after eating one and a half desserts, oops. The chef tells us that the portions are normally larger and that the kitchen adjusts the quantity according to how many courses you choose, so you always go home satisfied. I’d simply go for the six-course menu, so you get as many dishes from the menu as possible in front of you. Because they’re all delicious.
Yerba
Ruysdaelstraat 48
Amsterdam
Image: Susam Pang
