THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED NL

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED NL Restaurant Review:

It’s been, what, a good 250 years since there was a Dutch restaurant in New York? Inez Bon ended that hiatus when she opened NL in 2001. The super-compact, super-modern space features fixtures by hip Amsterdam design firm Droog, and tile portraits of Queen Beatrix are a groovy nod to Bon’s homeland (the bi-country restaurateur owns the Morlang café in Amsterdam). The sliver of a white-tiled open kitchen is the first thing you see upon entering---that’s where young chef Maarten Pinxteren coolly cooks dishes that’ll quash any jokes you may make about rollmops and cheese. Yes, in his hands there’s more to Dutch food than herring and Gouda. A base of meaty northern European cooking gets foreign flair from former colonies Indonesia and Suriname. The result is a jazzy, modern cuisine. Mesclun salad is chewy and bright with aged Dutch goat cheese, dill, and sweet tomatoes, oven dried just hours before. (Pinxteren cooks the dressing’s olive oil with peppercorns and lemon zest, then mixes in parsley.) Inside the thick, fried crust of NL’s signature croquettes is a truffle-oil-laced veal ragout so creamy you’ll wish it came in a big bowl. Haze peper, traditionally a rabbit stew, is almost like a confit, artfully layered with mashed potatoes. The curried chicken, inspired by Surinam cuisine, is grilled then finished in the oven, and it’s as soft and cake-y as milk-fed veal. It’s enough to make you sad the British wrestled New Amsterdam away from the Dutch.