De Waaghals — Restaurant in Amsterdam

My son, who is a student at the University of Amsterdam, was celebrating an anniversary dinner, my husband and I were visiting from United States. We made reservations at this restaurant. I’ll start with the food which was very mediocre. None of us really cared for it, but it was a nice experience until one of the waitresses got upset at my husband for making a very innocent joke. For every course you have one of the servers explains what you have. he said oh you don’t need to tell me anymore I just want to eat it all well she walked away very upset and right after that, she came carrying a chair behind him and hit him on the back with it purposely. Obviously, we were stunned and reported it to another server Which at that point 4 of them came out of the kitchen and started telling us how it was an accident we were wrong and we are a bunch of Americans that think we are better than them and then they mention my name Karen and started laughing out loud because of all the Karen jokes . We thought we were in a bad movie. We had just been served our last course which was our dessert but all we wanted to do was to get the check to leave and as I was paying the lady server once again said to me, you are completely out of line. Again she started saying it’s because you’re American and I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t let up she wouldn’t stop. I’m just trying to pay my $260 bill. I know this is a long post but just be aware of this place. I must add that the servers were not Dutch because I’ve had nothing but wonderful experiences with the Dutch people here. One of the servers that wasn’t harassing us got the owner on the phone for us and he just apologized, but never really did anything about it anyways just beware I wouldn’t go there. There’s many other restaurants in Amsterdam to go to. I would...

One of the best restaurants I've ever visited. We've been coming here for years, and now we live in Amsterdam we try to go every few months.

It's a simple and clever idea - there's a limited menu with four main courses, two vegetarian and two vegan, and they change it very frequently.

Strongly recommended is the €30 three course menu, where you get an appetizer, the main course and a dessert. It's an astonishing value - I have happily paid three times as much per person for food of such quality.

The recipes are always creative and extremely tasty. The plating is attractive without being pretentious. The decor is relaxed and comfortable.

And the wait staff has been particularly friendly. All of them speak perfect English but are very tolerant of my limping Dutch. They're very attentive without being in-your-face, and really, you couldn't ask for better service.

Also, the place is dog-friendly - now we live here, we bring our (quiet, little) dogs every time, though we have never seen another dog there.

This is officially my favorite restaurant in Amsterdam, and perhaps the world at this point. If you are a vegetarian or a vegan, this is THE spot to hit...

My partner and I are mostly vegetarian, we've been to a number of vegan/vegetarian restaurants and normally enjoy them a lot as an opportunity to taste unique flavors all created with vegetables and amazing sauces or spices. This unfortunately was not the case at De Waaghals.

The first course was raw broccoli with some horseradish paste spread on and crushed up sesame crackers. Despite dressing it up to look nice, it couldn't really hide how dull the dish was with minimal flavor.

Next was Rutabaga with a mole poblano sauce. I was quite excited to try this as I love mole, but unfortunately this left a lot to be desired. The Rutabaga was quite flavorless itself and the mole sauce was not great. Again a fairly dull dish.

The dessert ("cheesecake") was ok, interesting flavors with the vinaigrette and a nice crisp topping to go with it.

We both left still hungry and got more food after. The service was also painfully slow given we were there towards the end of the evening and most tables had already left. Given the price point and how many amazing reviews there are of this place, we were very disappointed with...