Café-Restaurant Amsterdam — Restaurant in Amsterdam

After cross-correlating several positive reviews during a recent week-long visit to Amsterdam, I decided to book a reservation for dinner after a long day of walking.

On arrival without reservation at 6:00P, I was impressed and drawn in by the immensity of the space and the welcoming way in they had transformed it. The hostess asked if I had a reservation and I confirmed I did not. Given that the dining room was nearly empty at 6:00P, this did not seem to pose an issue and she welcomed me in with a choice of one of three tables. I chose a two-top close to an old and very large pump (how cool!).

The hostess left me with a menu, a basket of bread and butter, and a bottle of water and departed. After a brief perusal of it, I immediately settled on the tomato soup as a starter and the venison—done medium—as my entree.

It was unfortunate that, at this point, I fell into something of a wait staff black hole, despite a dining room teeming with wait staff.

Despite pushing the menu to the far back of the table and looking expectantly at any wait staff whose eye I could catch, I waited an unusually long time for my order to be taken despite the quiet dining room at that hour. Eventually, the hostess who originally sat me came by and took my order.

Fairly quickly, my tomato soup arrived, delivered by another member of the wait staff (the second I was introduced to). A nice, basil-infused soup with a swirl of cream on delivery. All in all, quite good and satisfying.

After finishing my soup, it was quite some time before someone—yet a third member of the wait staff—noticed and cleared it away.

It was then an unexpectedly long amount of time before my entree arrived. In fact, it was so long that I'd long since finished off the bread and butter and bottle of water I was originally served. Unfortunately, no one ever stopped to ask if I might like more. Which, given how long the entree was taking, would have definitely been a "yes".

Before much longer, my entree arrived (delivered by a fourth and previously-unmet member of the wait staff), an appetizing arrangement with mushrooms and sauce, a side of fries (bonus—the menu didn't mention that!), and what appeared to be a plate of a pickled pear surrounded by pickled something else.

I thanked her and immediately grabbed one of the fries which was done perfectly. I then sliced into the venison steak only to realize that while savory and delicious it was much too close to still bleating or bellowing and quite lukewarm. Eager to send it back to get cooked a bit longer, I strove to catch the eye of any one of the four people who had served me thus far, including the hostess, but for the better part of 15 minutes, a bevy of wait staff seemed to avoid my table altogether. All the while, I devoured the delicious fries. The fries well past gone, I was finally able to grab the attention of a fifth member of the wait staff as they spirited out from behind the bar. I asked to have the steak cooked to medium and he happily obliged, took my steak, and whisked it back to the kitchen. On his quick return, he confirmed that it would be three minutes.

As promised, after three minutes, yet a different member of the wait staff delivered the now-steaming venison steak. It was good and flavorful but clearly microwaved to achieve the desired doneness. I got through the steak but at this point was disappointed enough with the whole experience to skip any offers of dessert.

Unfortunately, that offer never came since no one stopped by the table again despite placing my silverware per "I'm done" protocol and pushing the dishes to the back corner of the table.

After another long wait, I was able to grab the attention again of the waiter who had brought my steak back from the microwave and asked for the bill. He handled that quickly and thus ended my dining experience at Cafe Restaurant Amsterdam.

The ambience was great and the menu promising; however, between the underdone venison and the service black hole, the overall experience was somewhere between disappointing and...

Our visit was a little peculiar at best. The entrance is hidden behind three doors; the hostess took a good while to pay attention, given that I have counted 13 staff front-of-house members on the premise. All in all, a 3-course dinner took us 2,5 hours. We weren't sure who our waiter was, so we talked with five different people. The pause between the starter and the main was about 30-35 minutes, after which a started timing with a clock. Then we sat with empty plates for 10 minutes and waited for dessert 20 minutes before figuring out the waiter wanted us to reorder it after the main was accomplished. A little redemption was after a waiter was summoned, the dessert arrived within 2 minutes, and we were offered complimentary coffees. The space is quite ample and lacks sound control. The waiting staff was quite ignorant, and the table next to us wanted to order for about 20 minutes as well. We saw most staff wondering, drinking coffee, and chatting with each other at the bar and station behind us. At some point, the waiter started making gargling noises next to us for a solid minute, quite off-putting The food was ok at best, quite dated and “tired”. A flashback from somewhere in the 80-90s I would try to intentionally research this place before thinking of going there because when we casually came in, it wasn't...

The restaurant is located in an old factory, which has been very attractively styled and interesting. The menu is moderately to fairly expensive. Each group of tables is serviced by 4 to 5 waitstaff. Our group of four arrived early, were seated fairly quickly, but were then ignored for 10 minutes by all 5 waitstaff who were working around our table. We had to finally stop one of them and ask them to take our order for drinks, and then we got drinks. The waitstaff was reasonably prompt to take our dinner order, and the food arrived in reasonable time. When we asked for a tool to remove the shells from the Bambas, the server was somewhat rude and asked if I couldn't use my hands. The Bambas (very large shrimp in shell w/ head and legs) were difficult to get apart by hand, and they had very little flavor because no spices or seasoning was used (cost approx 18 euros). The pasta with veggie filling was not very flavorful, although it tasted homemade. The servers gave us the impression that they didn't care whether we were there or not. In short, at the cost of entrees, lack of interesting flavors for the entrees, and the lack of attentive service by the waitstaff, is why this restaurant is...