Odete’s Delicious is a small business owned by a Portuguese woman who’s been living in the Netherlands for 14 years.
Odete, is a very nice lady, always dressed with a smile and always up for talking about and explaining all the delicacies stories to her clients, both in Portuguese or Dutch.
Married to a Dutch man, she started her family here in Amsterdam, but the flavors from home are the cornerstone of her cuisine.
Odete doesn’t have an open restaurant or cafe, but a cute trailer with a big Portuguese flag, and you can find her around the weekend markets in Amsterdam.
She knows her Portuguese customers well, those that come to the markets looking for her trailer specially to get those tasty treats that reminds us all a bit of home.
We are not talking about that frozen fake stuff that we find all over Europe parading around as Portuguese food. No, this is real homemade food all made from scratch with Odete’s own hands.
And what does Odete prepare for us?
There may not be a lot of variety, but there is plenty of quality.
She bakes homemade cakes and the star is the Portuguese speciality, Pastel de Nata.
But in a land of all kinds of fried salty snacks like krokets, bitterballen and frikandellen, Odete bring us the real flavors from Portugal.
Pastéis de bacalhau, rissóis de camarão e coxinhas de galinha.
Pastéis or bolinhos de bacalhau is a codfish pastry. It’s a very typical Portuguese dish made up of potatoes, codfish, eggs and parsley. It’s deep fried and served as a snack or as a meal usually with rice as a side dish.
Rissóis de Bacalhau ( shrimp rissole) is a breaded deep-fried half-moon shaped pastry with a shrimp filling.
And finally the Coxinha de galinha is another breaded pastry originally from Brazil, but also very popular in Portugal, consisting of a filling made of shredded chicken covered in dough, molded into a shape resembling a chicken leg, battered and deep fried.
Getting to know Odete’s Delicious gives you that feeling of going back home, if only for a few minutes. When i got to Mercatorplein in Bos en Lommer, I saw Odete’s trailer and a smile immediately came to my face. It was still morning, so I enjoyed a tasty pastel de nata right there in that moment, but the best was about to come.
I ordered a package to take away with all the fried snacks: 4 pastéis de bacalhau, 2 rissóis de camarão and 2 coxinhas de galinha.
This was my lunch and dinner that Saturday. And YES, I was HAPPY with it 🙂
They were all very good, not greasy at all, and all the fillings were pretty generous. For me the best was the pastéis de bacalhau. The perfect amount of codfish that melted in my mouth.
I will definitely come back anytime I feel homesick!
And by the way, Odete also sells those snacks, frozen ready to take it away, so you can prepare them at home, to eat whenever you crave Portuguese food, or if you simply would like to show off to your guests.
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