Bar-Ca (Amsterdam) 12/09

After about five years Bar-Ca has established itself as a niche restaurant offering a combination of atmosphere and entertainment assisted by unusual Spanish wines and great food. This is a large venue in two rooms seating about 80, with an open kitchen at the rear

and a bar along one wall.
The unclothed tables are quite high with suitably high plain wooden chairs. A wall is covered with a flat red plastic cleverly painted to look like a button back leather wall, without the buttons! We enjoyed an unusual meal starting with a lightly toasted bread rubbed with garlic and tomato
and a large serve of Iberica prosciutto
followed by farmed Zeeland oysters, au natural
and wild oysters served with a mushroom veloute
made using the water from the oysters. An outstanding dish. A small bowl of good sized firm prawns in an excellent sauce was the last appetizer before the main course. The chef, Machael,
I'm unsure of the spelling, has been with the restaurant since it was opened by Bouka de Jong,
pictured here with his father, and his partner who we did not meet. Our main course, tournados,
was tender and beautifully prepared and the meal was finshed with a chocolate mousse cake topped with a preserved cumquot.
Apart from Mojito's, which are very popular here, they specialize in a bubbly Spanish wine called Cava, the one we had was quite pleasantly dry. We followed this with a quite excellent Spanish Museum Reserve red.