Couscousbar Amsterdam — Restaurant in Amsterdam

The food is decent, if you don’t mind playing russian roulette with a visit to the bathroom. I pretty much only feel safe ordering soup from here now, as the last two times I ordered the Couscous Royal (woefully overpriced) I was in a… bad way. Let’s just say that.

The experience you have is entirely dependent on two things: A - when you order (order early so you don’t end up with the dregs of the gastronomes, this is why I suspect I get so ill there), and B - who is serving you. Nobody that has served me has been anything comparable or mistakable as “friendly”, but at least they gave me more than a sliver of bread to have with my soup and didn’t charge me an unspecified 75 cents extra at their discretion.

One person working there gives me a healthy portion of bread with my soup, maybe too much, I haven’t seen her since so maybe they fired her. The last woman scowled at me, gave me a few crumbs and rounded my order up to the next euro.

Go here if you hate knowing what to expect, hate any room in your house other than the bathroom, and love spending money...

First time I ate there the couscous was mediocre, but the price made it work. Second time I came around, the prices jumped, and the owner was upstairs talking on the phone. After five minutes of waiting, one of the employees came, asked if we want to order, then talked to the owner. The owner, still not giving us the time of day, told her (ignoring us) that she'll be done with her phone talk soon. To note - despite there being other employees, none of them could take our order or do anything with it. Only she could. We kept waiting, and then we got up and left. If there weren't such a disregard to the fact we were there, if there was any effort in communicating to us approximately how long to wait, or any acknowledgement at all from the owner, I'd not be so upset. But if the owner can't even, for one moment, talk directly to us to say literally just "10 minutes I'm with you" instead of putting up a wall between us, we have no need...

I rarely leave negative reviews, but this experience with Couscous Bar was genuinely disappointing. I received the wrong order and one of the meals I paid for was missing. Instead of calling to clarify or offer an alternative, they put cookies in the bag as an apology…? We don’t eat cookies, and they’re definitely not a replacement for dinner. One of the missing items was soup — which was specifically for my girlfriend — and instead of helping, the person I spoke to on the phone told me it was my fault for ordering too late. She then suggested I could come back tomorrow to fix it — on King’s Day, no less? 🤨🤨

When I tried to explain calmly that the issue was on their side, she raised her voice and then hung up on me, and ignored the phone when I called her back. No responsibility, no proper solution, just blame and poor customer service. Really disappointing, especially considering how much I was looking forward to...