Ron Gastrobar — Restaurant in Amsterdam

Good food and beautiful setting but a bit overpriced and overrated.

Went to Ron Gastrobar during a visit to Amsterdam with my family during our vacations last October. Got reservations in advance as the restaurant is busy. I was looking for a restaurant with good steaks and quality food. We found Ron Gastrobar in all the top lists in Amsterdam and it boasts a Michelin Guide Star on the door, so our expectations were set high.

The restaurant is very stylish and the ambiance is cool. Their signature small dishes were the part we liked the most. Creative recipes with good quality ingredients. And their prices are very reasonable. My wife and daughter had a Sea Bass grilled. Good quality fish properly grilled.

The steaks were the disappointment of the experience. Maybe my expectations were too high given the Michelin Star and some reviews, but I felt the steaks we had average at max. Their prices, in the other hand, were at 3 Michelin Star levels.

We had a dry aged cut of a local breed that was very disappointing specially considering the price point. Despite being perfectly grilled, nothing special about it, not in terms of flavor, nor in terms of tenderness. Average being very positive. The 3 Star Ribeye was a better choice, better quality meet, but again nothing really special about it to charge the exorbitant price charged for it.

In European top restaurants they usually put special steak prices per 100g, so we paid more than €100 for each steak. You must deliver something really special at this price. And it was not the case.

Wine list is a good one but not too many options, specially in the lower part of the price list.

The service is an interesting part of the review. The restaurant have a set of incredibly beautiful young ladies serving. They all look like models. They provide a very casual and informal service, which could be considered a nice and interesting touch to the experience, but in our case they lacked of the skills and experience needed for a restaurant with a Michelin Star. They were not familiar with the menu, the service was confused and slow… Nothing wrong having beautiful people in the crew, but their skills need to be at the level of the restaurant.

All in all it was a good experience, but given the awards and price point, I found the whole experience a little bit below the expectations, specially regarding the steaks. Probably if we had eaten only their main dishes without the steaks my impression could be a bit better. But having a Michelin Star in the door comes with a...

Had high expectations based on previous reviews and some recommendations. Overall, some of our dishes were extremely delicious (the tacos, salmon tartare, and the beef Wellington). However the service we received was awkward and well below expectations of a restaurant of this caliber. Firstly our server changed at some point, the first waiter to attend to us was lovely and attentive but only took our starters orders. The waitress who followed was not very helpful in advising on meal choice, felt like she just cared about a high bill, and forgot to order our side dishes completely. We ordered our mains fifteen minutes before the kitchen closed - and when our beef was served the fries and famous cauliflower did not accompany it. Rather than admit her mistake she laughed through it and said she would check, we saw her debating with the kitchen staff who had already cleaned the kitchen, and then she told us it would be a couple of minutes and to eat our beef slowly so we could enjoy the sides (and laughed again) - didn’t ask if we would prefer to just cancel (again pushing to keep our bill high or something it felt), or admit she forgot. The sides took over twenty minutes, and the poor kitchen staff looked like they wanted to kill us. At no point did she apologize. By the time it arrived whatever beef we left to enjoy together was cold and we had no appetite. And the worst part followed, after asking for our bill we saw her ‘discussing’ something aggressively with the manager - assumed she told him what happened and maybe some compensation or at least apology would come. Because of their discussion our bill took another ten minutes to arrive, we were charged for the sides, no apology from her, no visit from the manager to apologize or try to make things better. Well well well below par. We left very bitter, struggling to remember that some of the experience (being some of our food) was great. We contemplated saying something all along but just felt it was so obvious they knew they did something wrong it should come from the staff, not...

Overall very disappointing experience for a Michelin rated restaurant.

Food - we found the menu to range from overly ambitious to painfully safe. On the ambitious side was the “tomato martini” (marked as a chef favorite on the menu), which was a tomato flavored jelly underneath a thick layer of very rich cheese served in a martini glass (see picture). We thought the textures were unappetizing and the cheese to be too rich which really unbalanced the dish. Worse though is the dish did not improve at all on the core ingredients of tomato and cheese, which raises the question why it should have been done at all. By contrast the mains were overly safe - essentially all large format steak dishes with little to no modification that honestly one could order almost anywhere (or cook at home) and find very little difference at all in the outcome.

Service - we found the service to be uneven and at times uncomfortable. We were given contradictory advice multiple times by our several waiters on how or what to order, and when we did order we were made to feel as though we had done it wrong somehow. Rather than be guided by the staff or made to feel comfortable, the ordering process was a bit confusing and opaque. For example we were encouraged to order “snacks” from a pre-menu before seeing the main menu, which made it difficult to judge how much or how many to order without knowing what else was to come. When we asked for advice the answers were curt, contradictory, or just unhelpful. I also should mention that I had to order my drink - a simple gin and tonic with just gin, tonic, and lime, a total of three times before it came to the table correctly. Such a simple drink! This is really not expected at a Michelin starred restaurant.

I will say that the spare rib dish was enjoyable, and we were given complementary ice cream cones at the end of the meal which was a nice touch. The ambiance of the place is good and the pacing of the meal was okay. But in this city where there are so many choices, I really think Ron’s Gastrobar has a few...