Loetje — Restaurant in The Hague

Mama Kelly is hard to find but sits beautifully next to a canal. The surrounding area are mostly industrial buildings and the restaurant itself has an industrial hipster twist to its interior & exterior. The ambience is nice, perfect to impress a date. Good music complement the place.

Service was fast and reliable. The waiter that served us was very attentive with the detailed explanation.

So, the food. We ordered the lobster au gratin and the classic chicken paired with cava. The lobster au gratin was overwhelming and the lobster lost its flavor. A better move would have been to order the classic lobster instead. Chicken was good but nothing to shout. There are are other places with better chicken and more delicious lobster, in terms of standards and are comparable. The side salad was okay but broccoli was overcooked. Bruschetta toast was hard on the edges and only edible in the middle bit. Maybe a different twist to Bruschetta? 🤷

There is a shared menu for lobster together with chicken but we opted for the Ala-Carte as we saw from other tables, the portions are huge, especially the chicken.

I was disappointed with the food as the reviews have been awesome and I've been looking forward to dine here for awhile. That's why I'm giving it 2 stars. If you want an instagrammable location, this would be a perfect restaurant. Other than that, the food is not much to rave for and I would not...

So I had Loetje's 3D printed vegetarian steak with with sambal jus. Texture wise, it's reminiscent of stewed meat or slow cooked pulled meat, but a bit more rubbery and "bouncy". The "meat" strands are also way thicker than regular meat. It's kinda like meat at first, but after the second bite, it's clearly not.

Flavour wise, it's very very salty and overloaded with spices or artificial flavouring. There is also a smokiness present similar to smoked ham or bbq-ed meats. Together it gives a heavily processed meat impression where all meat flavour is gone.

The sambal jus is just very very salty. To the point it almost tastes bitter. The sambal is barely noticeable aside from the smallest amount of heat. The fragrance and flavours of the peppers and spices are nowhere to be found. Not sure why you'd want to add so much saltiness to an already salty piece of "meat".

Other than being an interesting gimmick, I don't understand who this is aimed at. This will not convince a meat lover to eat this instead, especially considering the price point of €26,50 for a very small piece. And it will also not give a vegetarian a real meat experience.

The whole point of a steak is it's naturally presented experience. This 3D printed versions fails at it miserably by presenting it as...

The food is good, and specialising in chicken and lobster is a fun idea. And they have great oysters. The wait staff is young and fun, while still being knowledgeable enough. Not quite 5-star level, but still quite good. And it's in a nice location, and interestingly decorated. The reason this visit only gets three stars, though, is the pace we were served. We ordered drinks to start, and they took quite long to arrive. We had finished our drinks for a while, bit were not offered the menu to order our food; we had to ask for it. And then we waited quite a while again before the order was taken. After our main course was finished and cleared away, we did get the menus for dessert promptly, but waited at least 25 minutes before we could order dessert, and that only after we flagged down a waiter. And we were seated on the terrace, next to the bar, so really should have been seen before. A final thing, although I am not sure what the restaurant could do about this, is that we were plagued by flies that were gathering around my table-mates' lobsters.

I will go back, but maybe not on...