Review of greek restaurant Nostimo, Amsterdam

Good friends of mine recently moved to the far west of Amsterdam, close to Cafe/Restaurant Amsterdam and we decided to have a dinner somewhere close to their house. First we tried Restaurant Amsterdam, but it was full with a waiting list of half an hour, as we were told by a overheated waiter. I didn’t want to wait so long, so we decided to go to a Greek restaurant close by they had seen another time.

After a small walk we arrived at Nostimo, a small neighborhood Greek restaurant. The place was completely empty except for one couple. That made us quite scared to go in, because you know what they say…if a place is empty it must be bad! Anyway we overcame our fear and went inside and I am glad we did. The woman who greeted us was very friendly and showed us to our table and brought us the menu. The menu featured several Greek specialties like moussaka and has different kind of fish and meats on it and also boasted that all the starters are home made.

I decided to take a pastry filled with spinach and feta cheese as a starter and as a main course salmon. For drinking we took some wine and water. The wine wasn’t of the best quality (or maybe that’s just Greek wine ), but it was drinkable. Anyway a little later the starters arrived and they did look like they were home made. And they tasted quite good, although I would compare the taste of my starter to a croissant with spinach and feta. After we finished our starter, the restaurant was filling up a bit, so we had to wait a bit longer for the main course.

The main course was very pure food. My piece of salmon came with some salad and some mixed vegetables and some french fries. The french fries were one of the best I ever had in a restaurant. Also the side salad was very tasty. Where most restaurants just give this as an extra without paying much attention to the quality, here the side things were as good as the rest of the dish. The salmon was well cooked and didn’t have too many bones fortunately.

Of course I had to have a dessert after this nice dinner. There is not much choice dessert wise. Ice cream, a walnut cake or greek yogurt with honey and walnuts. I decided to take the walnut cake and a latte. The walnut cake was delicious and reminded me a bit of carrot cake. The coffee was not so good though. It was drinkable, but a bit bitter.

When we finished, we paid the bill and left and got a hearty kalinihta or goodnight in Greek from our friendly hostess.

Nostimo is a bit out of the way, but a good place to get some real Greek food and friendly service.