Sagardi Amsterdam — Restaurant in Amsterdam

The review of this restaurant cannot be positive, not because the food and its cuisine, which was good, but because of the bad attitude of the two employees attending the customers on Sunday evening, May 29th. As a background of my negative review, I must mention that we, my wife, and I, are from Barcelona, and were spending a few days visiting Amsterdam in a leisure trip. As this restaurant is very close to our hotel, the NH City Center Amsterdam, and being a Basque restaurant with good reviews so far, we decided that it would be a good choice to have dinner there, so we made a reservation for two at 20h30m via The Fork some days in advance. As we are aged and vulnerable persons regarding potential Covid infections, we went to the restaurant the day we arrived at Amsterdam, May 27th, to see how the dining room was to request a table as secluded as possible from the rest of the tables. We were attended by two young ladies from Spain who perfectly understood the situation and offered us the possibility to have dinner in a specific table, very secluded, that was in an open space very near to the entrance. For us was a perfect solution.

On May 29th, as we arrived at the hotel earlier than planned, we decided to pass by the restaurant and ask if we could go at 19h instead of at 20h30m. At that moment, there was nobody at the restaurant speaking Spanish (?). To our surprise, the waiter who was at that time at the entrance of the restaurant said to us that the table offered by his Spanish colleagues two days earlier was not available and that we should have dinner at the main dining room, and furthermore that those ladies were not entitled to have compromised such table by any means to anybody. Absolutely disappointed by the lack of flexibility and empathy of this person, we tried once more to explain to him what our situation was and at the end, he, for some reason I ignore, finally agreed to give us such table, but he made us very clear that he was not happy with the idea. The situation had not been pleasant, frankly, but the worst was still to come.

Despite the food, I remark again, was good, the dinner was, globally speaking, a very bad experience. Our table was attended by a lady, Amy Nicole, who didn’t speak a word of Spanish either. We were served the entrees quite correctly, but the main courses didn’t arrive. After a long wait of more than 40 minutes, nearly desperate with the long wait, we called the waitress to ask what the reason of the delay. She said, with very bad temper, prepotent and arrogant, that the main dining room was very busy, that they were few waiters/waitresses attending the restaurant and literally that “we shouldn’t complaint because they were making us a favor” attending this table outside the main dining room. Unbelievable!!!

We finished our main courses, and without further delay requested the bill, paid, and left the restaurant very disappointed and angry. What could have been a nice dinner in a good Basque restaurant ended up in a very bad experience because the unappropriated behavior, lack of professionality and empathy of these two persons attending the restaurant that day. This restaurant is not precisely cheap and should pay more attention selecting its personnel to avoid reviews of this kind. What for other customers having dinner at Sagardi Amsterdam was a good experience, for us was one to be...

We came to Sagardi based on a rec from a neighbor that lived in Amsterdam. The hostess and server really pushed their dry aged meat hard, but we wanted monkfish and reason for our visit. They sell meat and fish top based on weight they dictate the weight each night and it was either 1200 or 1600 grams. The price is 12eu at 1600 would make it 192eu. The weight of 1600 seemed huge and we were not that hungry. After seeing our hesitation, the server agreed to "allow" us to order 800 grams. We had monkfish, swiss chard side, bread and i insisted on tap water. They brought out 4 slices of bread with some tiny sausages and never explained to us that it was complimentary. I only found out it was complimentary when i overheard another table. These tiny sausages were super salty, chewy and flavorless. My water came in a refillable and tasted normal and i assumed it was tap water as i had requested. When the fish came, I knew immediately it was a racket with the weight. The majority of the weight was the huge bone that did NOT belong to our fish. I still held out hope for the taste of the fish. I was disappointed by the bland flavor of the fish and the only thing that saved it was the mediocre buttery sauce that it was drowning in. They put massive butter in the sauce to enhance the flavor but it was still flat. The swiss chard was bland. The 4 slices of bread was small and also flat. We had to ask for butter to enhance the flavor but it was unsalted. When i got the bill, they charged us $102 for the fish and claimed that it was 850 grams based on the weight. Total crap! The part that angered me the most was the 4eu charge for the water. When i brought this up to the waiter, he claimed it was not tap water, which was another lie. He made a big deal how he has to get someone to remove the $4 euros. I paid the bill and felt so scammed by this restaurant and do not trust them at all with their BS weight. Check out my supposed bone and fish and explain to me how i only got one side of the fish and the weight is 850 gram? Yeah right!! The restaurant was 1/2 empty so I guess they have to make their money on stupid...

Despite being our third choice of the night after an hour of walking (other two being fully booked out), you still couldn’t pay me to eat here. I’d rather a cheap pub steak over the 240 euros of the irresponsibly cooked ‘premium mature aged’ steak we were served.

We requested medium as safety as the reviews had a running theme of being raw (despite the restaurant cooking to medium rare by default, they will not ask you for preference). They presented us with hot plates for the steaks… 20 minutes before it actually came out— what is the point when it’s eventually cold?

When the steak did come out, I could only describe it as irresponsibly cooked. It was barely rested, shown by the dryness of the piece and its juices and blood amongst the plate. Funnily enough, we saw one side being raw and the other side… medium?

To cook the steak to ‘medium’, they prematurely cut up the steak and pan seared one side and presented it as if it was cooked normally. To be honest, the disrespect to the piece of meat and to us to think we’d interpret it as cooked properly is immensely funny as it is disrespectful.

To top off the night, while we requested the normal mature aged (as opposed to the premium mature age, a piece commanding a 30% premium to just ‘mature age’) we were dismayed to find that we supposedly bought into the premium version. 240 euros of steak that in Australia, was already commanding close to 1.5 to 2 kgs of high grade wagyu. Not exactly comparable to the circus we were presented with on the night.

Atmosphere was fine, service was lousy with waiters that perhaps didn’t want to pay attention to us, rather than not paying attention at all. Entrees were ok. The heart of the show was the biggest...