Amando Italia restaurant — Restaurant in Amsterdam

Just back from nearly 2 weeks holiday, and I’m already craving the Raviola Ricotta E Spinaci in butter with sage from Amando Italia. We stumbled into this restaurant near the beginning of our trip after finding ourselves disenchanted with the venue we were seated in. Leaving there to stumble into Amando Italia turned out to be fortuitous. At the time of my order, I asked our server Salvo if I could have my ravioli with marinara. He gently shook his head. I got the feeling that the “chef knew best”, and I ordered it as written. Now I only want spinach and ricotta ravioli with sage butter. It was delicious! Joe ordered the chicken pizza, a very generous portion that he thoroughly enjoyed. We shared a beautiful caprese salad (should have taken photos), delicious tiramisu, and a bottle of Montepulciano red at about one-third the cost of what we’d pay for it in a restaurant here in the states. The entire meal was very reasonably priced, especially considering the quality, portions and the service. Oh yes, the service. Salvo treated us like old friends, and the owner (Honey?) came by and visited with us for a while. We talked about restaurant business and family life, and felt like we had known each other for years. Sadly, this was the second of our two nights in Amsterdam or we definitely would have returned. Honey (sp?) and Salvo really embodied the spirit of hospitality my husband and I (both former restaurant management professionals) most value....

How this has 4.1 stars is absolutely beyond me.

€22,50 for carbonara, which has a whopping 15grams of pre cut “spek” (not guanciale!) and store bought paccheri (not self made) that is cold and tough ( not Al dente but literally raw ).

We smelled food burning in the kitchen and dirty dishes piling up. An inexperienced teenage cook being scolded by his superior.

Mayonaise from a packet (and that for a restaurant that dares to charge such prices) which came with the fried for the terrible burger and fish and chips.

Party next to us didn’t even finish their food

Our server took our plates before the rest of our party finished their food. Talk about rushed

Our server asked us about our dinner choices before we even got our drinks served

The single redeeming quality were the cocktails.

The cocktails were immaculate. Which is why we tipped solely the bartender. When we paid our bill we didn’t tip and our server looked like she was going to throw a drink in our face

When we tipped solely the bartender the server explicitly thanked us (without us reciprocating) most likely to ensure the tip would be split with them.

I sincerely hope the bartender pockets the tip as he’s the only one deserving for his skills: To be fair, he should jump ship as this place is going to (hopefully) go bankrupt

Horrendous experience. €145 for food that we would cook about a hundred times better at home.

0/10 would...

I used to like this place when they had the borrel/aperitif menu, but they recently changed the menu and transformed in an overpriced Italian restaurant.

The staff barely looks at the customers, they are offer chatting with each other, and when we were finally able to get their attention to take our order they were clearly unprepared and confused.

We had to wait so long for the things we ordered, while seeing that the couple next to us got everything they ordered even though they arrived after us.

We first ordered fries to eat while sipping on our cocktails but they arrived when we already finished the drinks.

As main course I ordered the ribeye meat and asked to have it rare, but it was served well done and it was incredibly chewy. My friend ordered the salmon with guacamole sauce and the sauce was brown, pretty inedible. When we finally order the dessert they tell us that they ran out of most of the things in the dessert list, leaving us with little choice. If they would have served us in decent waiting times, we probably would have been able to get the dessert we wanted to.

Moreover, a lot of cooking food smell would come from the kitchen, and my jacket smelled like whatever they were cooking. A good ventilation system should be the bare minimum in a restaurant.

Finally, the bill was 141€ for 2 people, we paid for horrible food and bad service. I will never come back...