Regarding the restaurants, first there was ‘Hot Meeting’,. Admittedly that doesn’t necessarily sound very Italian, but when you hear that it’s located in the university district just outside the center of Milan, you get the idea.

Then there was Il Paradiso, which I completely forgot to blog about. It’s an Italian eatery close to our house in the suburbs, which served wonderful food, but had awful awful staff. We were happy to find out they delivered as well and that delivery was quick and easy, so we’ve eaten from them again, just not at the restaurant. We actually ordered my birthday dinner from them. They serve a bunch of truffle dishes that burst with flavor.

Then there was lunch, at Barista in the Spuistraat in Amsterdam. With Barista you think coffee, and I’ve got to tell you, their coffee was awesome, but the true star of the show were the fresh ingredients in my panini. When I later took Laurens there for dinner, we were both very happy with their fresh pasta as well.

So the first 3 new restaurants of the year were all Italian.

And then we decided to go out for a cheese fondue at de Hartentuin. We hadn’t been there for a while and I felt like going out instead of cooking or ordering in. I was looking forward to all the cheesy goodness when we got on the tram. We walked towards the restaurant and couldn’t find it. We walked down the street three times and saw the Thai, the bar, the Italian restaurant, a crepes place, but no Hartentuin. Wondering whether I had mistaken the address I grabbed their business card which I had on me and found that they had disappeared. It made me sad, no cheesy goodness. We still needed to eat however.

Enter L’Incontro.

L’Incontro looked nice from the outside and I vaguely recalled wanting to go there for restaurant week. We decided to give it a try. We were welcomed with a glass of Prosecco, a couple of rolls with olive oil and 2 slices of truffle toast before we browsed through their menu.

It wasn’t until later that I realized that by stepping into L’Incontro I’d fulfilled my goal of 4 new restaurants. And it wasn’t until I started writing this review that I realized all those restaurants had been Italian.

L’Incontro is -as far as restaurants in Amsterdam go- a fairly upscale Italian restaurant. Where most of Amsterdam’s Italian restaurants are cheap pasta and pizza places that serve crappy wines and cheap food (both in price and quality), L’Incontro gives you a glass of Prosecco and some really nice truffle toast when you enter. Their menu isn’t cheap, but that’s okay. No decent, good quality restaurants really are.

L’Incontro’s menu is extensive, but not in the 367 different pizza toppings kind of way. They have a decent amount of options for each possible course of a menu. Hot and cold antipasti, salads, soups, pasta’s, pizza’s, meat and fish dishes. Since we figured that the serving sized would probably not be Italian sized, we both opted for an antipasto and a pasta. Laurens chose Vitello Tonnato as a starter and I chose the Involtini di Melanzane, rolled up, cheese stuffed eggplant.

The eggplant dish was pretty good, but not exceptional. I think they either used Dutch ingredients or adapted the dish to Dutch taste, because the dish tasted a little flat. Not unpleasant, it was tasty even, but not exceptional. Laurens said about the same about his Vitello Tonnato.

When I chose my pasta course, I realized that I was potentially setting myself up for disappointment. They had a dish on their menu which had the exact ingredients listed that Tarantella lists for their ‘Fussilli alla Carbonarina’. I knew there was a very, very big chance that it wouldn’t be the same. I didn’t want to take the chance that it actually was the same dish and I wouldn’t know to look for another name for the recipe.

So I chose the ‘Farfalle alla Zingera’ and Laurens picked one of the fresh pasta’s, ‘Lunette al Tartufo’. When the pasta’s arrived I knew it wasn’t the same. It didn’t have the explosive smell, which meant it couldn’t have that same explosive taste either. In all fairness, if I’d never eaten the dish at Tarantella before, I would’ve thought it was great. Laurens’ lunette however, were phenomenal. The simplicity of the dish only enhanced the amazing flavors. Truffle and ricotta wrapped in fresh pasta dough served with some roasted tomatoes, fresh arugula and a drizzle of olive oil. Fresh pepper and fresh grated parmigiano completed his dish. It was heavenly (I made him give me a bite) and has definitely made it to my top-rated dishes – only slightly below the Carbonarina. We drank a simple white house wine, which was a decent wine at a decent price. Just what you expect from a house wine.

After hearing the waitress (in Italian) asking the owner if she couldn’t have a piece of Tiramisu ‘because it’s Sunday’, we knew that we needed to share that dessert. Both of us knew we wouldn’t finish a whole serving, but we did want to try. The Tiramisu was wonderful. Full of flavor. If made at home we would’ve possibly added a little more booze, but that’s something you just don’t do at a restaurant, and honestly, the flavors were amazing. The perfect ending to a nice meal.

We finished our evening at L’Incontro with an espresso and a sambucca, which was the only true disappointment of the evening. L’Incontro apparently serves ‘Smit en Dorlas’ coffee, which really isn’t the best there is. After a dinner that’s so carefully prepared and so authentically Italian, you expect a well brewed espresso made from great beans. This cup of coffee surely wasn’t great. It didn’t even near the good category, but stayed stuck at ‘average’, which -at an Italian restaurant- is kind of a disappointment.

All in all L’Incontro was a good find. We’ll likely go back there again, and will recommend it to (or take) friends. I will however encourage them to order their fresh pasta, but stay away from the coffee!

In all honestly, I don’t think I can and should blame myself. The only one to blame is the weather. The immense amount of rain, rain and more rain that have graced spoilt our Dutch summer are the cause of my tomato misery.

Last week I posted about how large the tomatoes were, just waiting for a little sun. Last week I had a week off and tended the plants continuously. I removed the dying, rotting leaves that had started to come in. I knew the leaves would likely keep on dying on me, but who knew if the tomatoes would just have enough time to redden up. To ripen, to meet their destiny of salads and sauce.

I spent my weekend at Food Blogger Connect in London. It was a fabulous fabulous time of which I will share more later. Laurens took care of our tomatoes for me. Making sure that once they were ready to be picked, he would do so.

The tomatoes never got there, they just weren’t red and ripe enough yet. And then Monday morning, when I looked, I found that all the tomatoes, green, slightly orange, or almost red, had started to rot themselves.

Some were covered in a fungus. I had feared it already. I had read up on my tomatoes when the rain started, 2 months or so ago, and learned that much rain on the plants can cause a fungus on the plants. If you don’t irradicate it completely and immediately, it will affect the tomatoes. They’ll shrivel and rot.

I must’ve missed the fungus when I cared for my tomatoes last week. I removed everything I saw that looked unhealthy. But the plants were so big that there was a good chance I missed an infected leaf. I’ll never know.

All I know is that on Monday morning I found that it had spread. I couldn’t find a tomato I could still safe. The one that looked okay, once turned around, showed a giant hole where bugs have crawled in.

Last wednesday I bought new canning jars, to fulfil my 11 in 11 canning challenge with tomatoes. I was so confident in my beautiful crop. Now I’m just sad. My beautiful tomatoes are no longer there, all that’s left is a sad, sad garden patch, which has lost all hope, until next year.

Tuesday evening I looked at them again, one last time before goodbye. I pulled out most of the plants, cut them off at the ground and found a couple of green tomatoes that hadn’t gotten infected yet. I vowed that if there was even one worth saving, I’d save it. I want my tomatoes! So now I have a platter full of hard, green tomatoes sitting in front of the window. Hoping to get a glimpse of sun, so they can get red and be roasted into sauce. They won’t be nice enough to eat raw. I know that. That’s what you get when you have to pick them green. But they might still make a decent sauce. Maybe I will still make that 11 in ’11 canning challenge after all.

Him handing me his iPhone (which takes way better pictures than my phone and I hadn’t thought to bring a camera to the restaurant) resulted in wondering stares from not only our own table, but other tables as well. Why the heck would you want to photograph your risotto?

The verdict: Hot Meeting’s risotto was fabulous. The grains of rice were full bodied, flavorful, just done enough, with a beautifully balanced amount of saffron, good quality stock, parmigiano and butter. It was creamy and wonderful. Simply presented as a little yellow circle on a big white place. Elegant simplicity at it’s best. And the best part – for me personally – my own risotto comes pretty close in taste and texture.

Hot Meeting at the corner of Via Sansovino and Via Fillippino Lippi (At Piazza Gian Lorenzo Bernini) was the first ‘new’ restaurant we tried this year, thanks to my parents-in-law. This puts me 1 restaurant into this year’s goal of visiting 4 new restaurants. And to finish up the review, my steak was wonderful as well, the house wine was fine, nothing extraordinary, just a good glass of white. Our whole party was pleased with their food, between the several fish and seafood dishes, the veal cutlets and the gnocchi alla sorrentina eerybody enjoyed their dinner. We skipped dessert, but did have coffee and a limoncello, which was the perfect ending to a very nice dinner. Hot Meeting is slightly less of a romantic setting than Tarantella, which I reviewed before. The food they serve is more the standard Italian fare, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. The quest for good quality products and balanced tastes is ever present in Italian cuisine, so if you’re not looking for a romantic candlelit dinner, but just good quality Italian food with friendly service, Hot Meeting sure is worth the visit.