Gigi’s | Voorthuizen (NL)
Quality ingredients, with elegantly light sauces, clear flavours and noteworthy tastes.
Great to have such a gem close to home!
The Chinese restaurants in The Netherlands are like the Indian places in the UK. You’ll find one in every village for your favourite takeaway. They first came to the country early 1900’s and started to boom from the 60’s and 70’s when more and more work immigrants came over and people started to go out to dinner.
Nowadays it’s not easy to find a really good one, as they tend to go for quantity instead of quality and it’s not your goto place for fine dining. And then our friends told us about Gigi’s Oriental Wine & Dine in Voorthuizen (NL).
Voorthuizen is a village in the municipality of Barneveld, in the Dutch province of Gelderland. Founded about 1500 years ago, according to legend, near a crossing of a ford of the Ganzenbeek, a brook that no longer exists, on the road from Amsterdam to Deventer. Where 40 years ago the cows were grazing and sheep were flocking, you’ll now find an abundance of bungalow parks and camping sites, as tourism is currently the main income of Voorthuizen.
And this is where Chung Man and his wife May opened their second restaurant in June 2020, right in the middle of the Covid lockdowns. Gigi’s Oriental Wine & Dine is named after their (now 14 year old) daughter Wing Gi, who’s pet name has been Gigi since the day she was born. The couple also has a son, ChunYu, who is 2 years older than Wing Gi.
It’s safe to say Chung and May Man are hospitality veterans as they worked more than 30 years in their first restaurant in the nearby village of Garderen. An authentic Cantonese specialities restaurant called Camposing, first opened in 1990 by Chung’s sister Kuen with Chung’s brother as the chef. Chung started to work for his sister early 1991 and became her business partner six years later. A restaurant that built quite a reputation in the area. Earlier this year, unfortunately, they had to close the restaurant after 32 years due to lack of staff.
Gigi’s Oriental Wine & Dine is open six days a week for both lunch and dinner is and closed on Tuesdays. The menu offers an array of Cantonese, Thai and Japanese dishes and freshly made sushi. Starters range from € 7,00 to € 9,50 and mains from € 18,50 to € 25,50
We had dinner, together with our friends and fellow culinary enthousiasts Ron and Petra, on a Wednesday two weeks ago.
We like to taste as many different things as we can, so we ordered a selection of Uramaki sushi and a Starter’s Plate to share.
From left to right we had, 1. Surf & Turf with crispy fried prawn, beef fillet & spicy mayo; 2. Crispy Chicken, with fried chicken, pumpkin & fried onions; 3. Spicy Salmon with avocado & tempura powder and Spicy Tuna with chives & 7-spices powder; 4. Ocean Roll with salmon, pumpkin, avocado, mayo & sesame seeds
The sushi is freshly made here and that not only shows, but also shines through in the taste. The rice at room-temperature, with the right consistency so that it stays together as you eat it and falls apart once in your mouth. The neta (filling and topping) proportionate to the rice and of good quality.
If anything, maybe a bit too generous size uranaki and sometimes a bit of a challenge to put in your mouth in one go, but I wasn’t complaining!
The starter’s plate offered a nice selection of bites: tender beef fillet skewers with ketjap & sesame seeds; tasty chicken Yakitori skewers with crispy onions; Beautifully fried Gyoza; amazing Tji Ma Ha (sesame-coated fried gambas); Veggie spring rolls; and Edamame beans. Lovely!
We ordered four different mains to share, with some fried rice and rice noodles.
Roasted Peking duck breast on a bed of crunchy stir-fried vegetables with hoisin sauce. The crispy skin and juicy duck meat are doing this Beijing dish justice. Well seasoned and nice flavours!
Koeng Pao is a popular stir fry sauce in Szechuan cuisine and one of my favourites. Gigi’s version has depth, with ginger and garlic coming through nicely, cut through by the soy sauce and vinegar. Chicken fillet and stir-fried vegetables are coated by the unctuous, light spicy, sauce.
Wonderful large Chinese prawns with a good crispy and light batter. With vegetables, stir-fried in black pepper and garlic. Some prawn cracker and sesame seeds sprinkled on top. Love the clean flavours in this dish and those prawns are delightful!
And finally, cod fillet with a tempura-like batter in a sweet and sour sauce with red and yellow bell peppers. What an excellent dish! With sterling cod, flaky and succulent as you like, with a perfect crunchy batter. And again a refined sauce just coating the fish and vegetables.
Thoroughly enjoyed this dinner! Not your average Dutch Chinese restaurant, where dishes have lost a lot of their authenticity and have become more and more Dutch, and with thick and starchy sauces covering most of the dishes.
At Gigi’s, dishes display quality ingredients with elegantly light sauces, clear flavours and noteworthy tastes. Great to have such a gem close to home. We most certainly will be back!
