Spang

For the amount of Surinaamse food present in Amsterdam (and The Netherlands in general), I barely ever write about it. Well, that’s about to change right about now! I present you, Spang – coming from Zuid and East all the way to Rozengracht, just last week.

To be honest, I wasn’t familiar with the Spang Makandra brand. Now that I’ve done a bit o f research, I see they were quite well established in the Surinaamse/Indo/Javanese scene. After all, they do have 4 locations now, which means a good amount of people out there like it. BUT, did I like it? I’m getting there.

I headed out to Spang last weekend with Hayden and a couple of friends who, unlike me, already knew about this place from De Pijp. The venue is small and nothing pretentious. We sat at a table next to the window (yay for light and good pictures, eh?) and got our menus, with plenty of options. Since I was pretty new to the whole concept, I went with the Spang Makandra Special.

As you can tell, this is a great choice if you can’t really decide on one thing or would like a bit of all the goodies. What you see here is: fried rice, noodles, chicken fillet, chicken satay (sauce on the side), potato sambel and veggies.

My favorite parts of the dish were the chicken fillet in some sort of delicious sauce and the noodles because…well, I live for noodles. As mentioned, there was plenty of satay (peanut) sauce on the side, so you could pour it over the chicken skewer, or over literally everything if you want. You get 2 hot sauces, one red one (low to medium) and a yellow one (actually hot and so, so good).

Hayden made the same choice and was happy to do so. He managed to eat a little over half. I managed to eat less than half. The noddles and rice combo is a true killer. Eventually, I ate 3 time out of this 1 meal – no worries, you can totally take-out your leftovers.

My friend had the vegetarian Javanese Rames, which honestly looks just as good and it’s tempting me for my next visit. A vegetarian Spang Makandra Special is also available.

The third meal at our table was the Indo Rames, another type of small “rijsttaffel”. I haven’t tried it, but my friend swears by it. Still, I’d suggest you go with the “all in” special above if this is your first time here.

Food at Spang was authentic, flavorful and more than filling. Moreover, each of these plates costs less than 10 EUR. Given that I managed 3 lunches out of 1 meal, I’d say this is an exceptional value for money. You may eat more than me, but finishing your food here is pretty impressive.

A couple of things to know before you visit:

• they don’t serve any alcohol
• all food is halal, in case that influences your decision in any way
• service is a bit slow, although at that point we were the only ones in the restaurant

A great experience at Spang, I’m glad that they’re now in the West/Jordaan area as I can see a lot of hungover lunches here in my future. I’ll have the Mimosas at home, naturally.

Value for money: 10

Food Quality: 8

Location: 9 (Rozengracht 214 ,Gerard Doustraat 39, Boerhaaveplein 3, Tussen Meer 227)

Service: 7

Website:   https://www.facebook.com/spangmakandra/

Have a suggestion, question, or just want to hola at me? Find me here: sayhello.eatandtell@gmail.com