Zeeuwse Streken, Middelburg
Our Recs · Restaurant
Zeeuwse Streken
Zeeland is mussel country, and Zeeuwse Streken cooks like it knows exactly where it is standing.
We began with oysters — half of them raw on ice with a shallot vinegar, half gratinated and browned at the edges — and then a plate of cured salmon with cucumber, tarragon and lemon zest, as clean and as pretty as anything we ate that week.
Then the two dishes we came away talking about. The mussels arrived in a black pot in their own liquor with the herbs still in among them, and they were exactly what you want from mussels this close to the water: sweet, plump, and left alone. The zarzuela was the other stand-out — mussels and cockles in tomato with olives and spring onion, a Spanish stew built out of Zeeland shellfish, and it worked completely.
After that, fillets of fish over a carrot purée with beans, and a bowl of proper fries with proper mayonnaise, which is not a small thing.
What lifts this place beyond the plates, though, is the room and the people in it. The service was excellent: warm, attentive without hovering, glad to talk you through the shellfish and not at all precious about any of it. The dining room is light and wooden and easy to sit in — the kind of place where you look up and find that two hours have gone.
We would go back. We would take you.
The table
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