Castell — Restaurant in Amsterdam

I have the worst restaurant experience in my life at this restaurant on Sunday.

The thing is I came with my Chinese client, she doesn’t feel comfortable to eat without table.And we saw there were some spare tables in front. So we asked whether is possible to switch . The manager told me, it had been reserved,but after 30 minutes there was no one come and more spare tables came up. After requested 4 times about the table, they finally gave us a one.

We booked this place late so we understand it is possible we would not have a good place to seat. But what I saw was kinda of weird on that day when is that they put all the Asian guests ( tourists) on one area without normal table to eat. ( which is claimed as a Dutch tradition, and put the locals and white people to the nicer area. ) Even when there were starting to get some empty table. so I got the impression this is the racist place, which make me felt really uncomfortable.

Speaking of the service, the guy who were in charged was at least trying to help us ( at least show it ) but the first girl who took order was really impatient, which made us felt like she don’t really want us to be there .

The food was okey, the the ribs and the chicken were actually nice. But for me it is not worthy to come especially if you are a tourist.

I wrote an article about my experience on Chinese social media because of concerns about discrimination and so far I have got 12k reads and hundreds of comments, people shared with me different experience about this restaurant. To be honest what I saw is the food was nice but the service quality varies largely .

I also did some research saying that the no table thingy maybe is not toward particular group of people, so there is potential I got it wrong that that special area is just for Asian/tourist. But it would still be nice if someone in the restaurant can explain it or if some guest also experienced the same or not. Anyway ,It should be zero tolerates towards any kind of discrimination.

So I won’t recommend people to try their luck ,if you are potentially going to have a weird experience.

And I also feel it is so pity that this restaurant used to get a lot of good reputation,but the real experience for the tourist is like...

We came to Amsterdam to see the museums after spending an incredible week in Paris. The restaurant culture in Amsterdam is very different—not at all like the countries I’ve visited: US, France, China, Spain, Mexico, England. As foreigners/ tourists we were treated very poorly at Castels. This is what happened: we sat waiting for our food for 90 minutes as we watched locals get seated and served. This was done without any kind of recognition by the staff that it was wrong. I noticed some tourists (who happened to be Asian) treated much differently. They were served promptly; they were in and out. I was confused by the indifferent service. We were absolutely ignored. I didn’t know what we did to deserve this. I approached our waiter to ask about the situation and he did something very, very bad: he mocked me. He defended himself without any kind of recognition that we had been waiting for so long. At one point, the waiter said …”you need to order like the Chinese…they order everything at once. Sometimes even ice cream.” He contrasted that w/ us because we ordered soup first. (?) Anyway, even w/ our obvious dissatisfaction, no attempt was made to rectify the situation. I felt mocked and even abused. My husband and I paid the bill without ever being served our steaks even though we were seated in front of the chef who had probably grilled 40 steaks right in front of us. It was an awful experience. I’m 57, and I’ve been to a hell of a lot of restaurants, but I’ve never felt so demeaned. (Not exaggerating. I never write bad reviews) Castels is a beautiful European restaurant, but better for locals. It may have been anti-Americanism, and it was really anti-humanism. Tourists should not go here . We went to the Marriott for our...

Don’t ruin your Amsterdam experience here.

Came here on two separate days. On the first day, we were turned away because they were “full” and we were told that we should have made reservations beforehand. The space was empty but they were firm that the seats are all taken up.

The next day, a friend of mine dropped at 5.45pm by to make a reservations for dinner. She was told that they do not accept reservations - only walk-ins are allowed.

We are a party of 6 yet they sat my friend at the bar counter when there were tables comfortable for 6 available. She was then forced to order when the rest of us were making our way to the restaurant. After 10 mins, the waitress told my friend that they were “full” and could not accommodate the rest of us. How is that possible when they have already sat her down at the bar counter with 5 empty seats around her? When we arrived the restaurant, again we were turned away. The restaurant is not full yet they claimed that they were. The waitress even rolled her eyes at us.

These made me deduce that this restaurant is racist towards asians and from all the 1 star reviews here, it’s prevalent that it is true.

The food may be good but if they’re unable to treat people equally, then no one should patronise this place. Better food, better service and better atmosphere can be found in other...