ARCA Amsterdam — Restaurant in Amsterdam

In summary: super bad option for celebrating my anniversary

Starting with the good points: nice and tasty food super modern and nice dining room since we were celebrating our anniversary, they invite us to a glass of rosé

Bad points: The waiters didn´t know how to present the plates in our tasting menu. One of them was explaining a bit, but apologyzing cause he was confused about the exact ingredients. The other one was only saying: enjoy!! Then the other one came to explain it when we had almost finished it. Extremely slow service. 2h for 6 (small) dishes. 25 minutes waiting between the second and third one. We were only 4 tables in the dining room, four!!! 10 people in total. We ordered non alcohol beer. They weren´t sure if the had it, so they left to check it. After almost an hour we asked again cause they had forgotten...and ordered some water instead. They skipped two of the courses. They brought the "petit fours" and left. Nobody in the room or in the kitchen. We were the last ones there. But the tasting menu said we still had two courses before the "petit fours". I left my table and went to the kitchen, but nobody there, waiters gone. After a while we complained, they apologyze and came with the missing plates. Still, last ones and super slow service. And no compensation for their mistakes, of course. No details at all.

Come on guys! You have to check on the customers a bit more often!

Super dissapointing experience. I watched Enrique Sa Pessoa in the spanish version of Masterchef and since that moment I was eager to go to one of his restaurants. Not any more of course! I´ve been in Portugal a couple of times and food and service was amazing everywhere there!

We politely complained to one of the waiters when we paid. He just said that they save 2h for the service. That was their explanation. My eyes wide open.... So if you happen to go to ARCA, be ready to wait 20 minutes between each small course (you won´t spend 20 minutes eating each one of them...).

As I started saying, the food was good and Henrique can have be named the 38th Best Chef in the World, but I am pretty sure that it was not because the caotic service at his ARCA restaurant.

PS: If you include a chic candle in each table,......

What a great experience last night. A restaurant with amazing Portuguese food with a twist. Being a Portuguese myself born in Amsterdam I was always let down by the Portuguese restaurants in this city. Very often they were tourist traps or they tried to serve you traditional food but of bad quality. But now, finally a great restaurant with great service and when a Portuguese that loves to eat says it’s good then you can be sure it really is! I’d like to call out everybody to go and check this place out!

UPDATE: So I have been back here after having had an amazing dinner a few months back. I decided to take a friend to introduce him to nice Portuguese food. This was a letdown this time. Had to wait long before we could order food as the waiter was busy rearranging bread.... but that I can live with. What i cannot live with is that you order an Arroz de Marisco for two people which comes down to 25 euros per person and they serve it in a big Cataplana but you really had to look deep into the pan to find a bit of rice that was at most for a person and a half.... And ok, fancy restaurants do fancy tiny portions, I get that too.... but what is unacceptable is that the rice was cold. therefore the taste was mediocre. Definitely a letdown. On top of that they had a dessert on the bar menu that I would really like which was not in the restaurant menu. I saw it cause we had to sit in the bar first. From the bar we got cocktails which we could bring into the restaurant but the desert I wanted I could only get in the bar. While it comes out of the same kitchen they made us go from the restaurant where we were cosy to the bar to eat the dessert. No discussion possible, rules are rules according to the staff. I asked if I had to pay the restaurant bill separate, but no, that could all be put together.... make this make sense..... So i had the baba de camelo, which in Portugal is made with condensed milk, here it was reduced to some kind of caramel tiramisu... another letdown but in this case it's the chefs interpretation so not much I can say about that. But the cold Arroz de Marisco together with the inflexibility of the staff made me adjust this review from 5 to 2 stars and I wont be...

My daughter and I dined at ARCA last night. We chose the tasting menus - one of each - Classico and Coast to Coast. Each dish in both menus was fantastic , the flavours the balance of it and the presentation and the wine we had was equally good. We asked if we could have wine pairing and was told that sommelier wasn’t able to talk to us but had recommended a wine. This in itself was disappointing and isn’t something I had experienced before in a restaurent that had a sommelier. We then had to ask a pairing to change the wine ( pairing means the sommelier recommends a wine with each or some of the dishes and or a wine flight is offered) , again no wine expert let alone the sommelier deigned to speak to us but our waiter David offered a delicious Chablis ( assumption was that the sommelier had recommended it) . Imagine my surprise then to find that we had been charged a wine pairing fee for one - though each of us had the same wines and the one person had an extra glass of wine the Chablis - the charge for pairing was more expensive , the Chablis ( on comparison with the wine charge for the other similar wine was €20/- ) yet the most expensive Chablis on the wine list was €13 so it seems there was a fee for the pairing of €7/- despite David our waiter assuring us this wasn’t the case . David’s service was attentive, friendly, caring and knowledgeable until the restaurent became busy . I did feel a bit neglected as a course came to the table and there wasn’t an accompanying explanation of the dish which is always a nice touch when having a special dish on a tasting menu until I raised the issue . All in all the delicious and lovely meal was spoiled by the opaque bill disguising the charge for wine pairing when the sommelier didn’t even talk to us . This is the reason for the score of 3 for service even though we did leave a 15% tip . Such a pity . Atmosphere was spoiled by hotel guests in bathrobes from the pool and sauna walking across...