Allegations on Iens.nl (part of TripAdvisor)
“Wow, this is literally the worst I’ve eaten in months. […] although the staff were friendly, they were running around like headless chickens. […] The pulled chicken salad was a grade-A disappointment: it wasn’t actually pulled, but basically strips of chicken thigh marinated in barbecue sauce. […] Truly gross with a capital ‘G’.
K & B. It’s not very clear what the abbreviation stands for. Kip & Bier (‘Chicken & Beer’)? Kraanvogel & Bosuil (‘Crane & Brown Owl’)? Kanen & Bikken (‘Tuck & Chow’)? When we ask, our waitress – an RV girl judging by her hair but not a hardliner – tells us it doesn’t matter. “Whatever you fill in on Google, you always end up here,” she says with a smile. Clever. But the official name is Kip & Biertuin. We put up our feet in the ‘beer garden’. It’s a large, cosy terrace with shadow, sun and hardly any wind, as well as a view of Oudedijk – so there’s always something to see. They also have an outdoor bar, a marquee sign and a garden grill. For reasons obscure, the terrace is pretty empty during our visit. Apart from us, there are only two other people – quite odd on a sunny Friday afternoon.
Let’s move on to the chicken. We order the two classics on the menu: the BBQ ‘pulled chicken’ salad (EUR 12.75) and that other timeless dish: a grilled half chicken (EUR 13.75, eating a whole chicken for lunch would really be pushing it) ‘lacquered’ with piri piri, with fries and mayonnaise on the side. The half chicken piri piri tastes as you would expect it to, although the breast meat is a bit dry. The salad is alright, although the lettuce is difficult to eat: the large leaves are tough and a bit grassy, and apparently included for decorative reasons rather than for consumption – which is weird in the case of a salad.
And K&B is also guilty of severely abusing the trendy ‘pulled’ label. To start, officially, the specification ‘pulled’ is used exclusively in combination with pork, which needs to fall apart like slow-cooked beef. And if you nevertheless decide to prepare chicken this way, you need to make sure it falls apart into small pieces (more surface means more flavour!). No such luck here. They’re serving morsels of chicken thigh. Tender though, which is always preferable to dry cubes of filet chicken. The barbecue sauce, which comes straight from the wholesaler, is designed to cause no offence. So you can hardly say it’s disgusting.
In short: fine student grub for a reasonable price, although the margins are definitely in the owner’s favour.
