Description: As the weather was starting to look to be taking a turn for the worst we dived into the lively looking Toscana restaurant. Fortunately, we found we had inadvertently landed in a reasonably priced great restaurant in the centre of Amsterdam. We were confronted with a large menu with a pizza range extending over onto two pages; with the most expensive pizza at 9:50 Euros it did not break the bank. There was also a good pasta range which was equally reasonably priced.
The Toscana restaurant is housed in a large old building with some loose 1920s – 30s styling. The room had a lowered ceiling and I would have wanted to try and open up the original height and decoration of the place. Still, the restaurant was certainly busy and we nabbed one of the few remaining tables.
For starter, we decided to share a bruschetta of 4 different topping; salmon, a lovely tapenade, mushrooms and grilled goats cheese. Our starter arrived promptly and was just enough for the three of us to share as a little snack. We ordered beer, and my dark Belgium Trappist monk beer was particularly noteworthy.
While we were happy to chat and watch the world go by, the wait for our pizza was notably long although we did not appear to be served out of turn. If anything, it seemed like the place was understaffed as the bar was piled high with dirty glasses, the kitchen which you had to walk past to use the bathrooms were piled high with used plates and tired looking staff were darting around.
When it finally arrived, my pizza was excellent and we were all quite happy with our respective choices. On a rare sense of having eaten too much, I even left some of mine; a two salami choice, and cooked with a large quantity of smoked cheese. The following morning I regretted having left some; not because I was hungry, but because it was so nice.
Overall, we found a good restaurant with the Toscana and the bill of around 20 Euros each for a shared starter, a main course and a couple of beers was certainly good value.
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