Soenes Roti Bar & Grill — Restaurant in Amsterdam

As an update: I was very touched by the restaurant's attitude to address the problem I raised and revisited the place. I had a good experience this time. The soy sauce chicken (Ketjap kip) was good, although a bit salty for me.

One good thing in my opinion is that the restaurant is outside the typical tourist area in Amsterdam, which means that it is the type of place which locals would also go for meals, and can be more price worthy. I will likely going back again when I am in town some future summer and try the Parbo beer (I wanted to, but the bottle is 1L so would be too much for me travelling alone). The place smelled good, food was impressive, and the staff appeared friendly. Things remained really satisfactory until the time of payment: When I went to the counter, I found out that they increased everything's price for one Euro without updating the menu (another customer was having a dispute with the staff). Also, they don't tell you about it until when you pay -- no one told me when giving me the menu, when I ordered the food, when asking whether I wanted any drink, and even after I finished my meal.

To clarify, the prices look fair to me even if with that extra Euro added, and I just paid without going into any further argument (I was leaving the country the next morning, and the one Euro wasn't worth any trouble). I choose to believe that the staff didn't intend to deceive any one, but their practice of providing misleading information to customers disappoints me a lot. I have been to nearly 30 countries, and have travelled in the Netherlands for more several times, never encountered such a situation before. This dining experience ended up among my worst for sure. I understand that things may be getting difficult for small businesses, but that's not, and should never be, a justification.

Before I overheard the dispute, I was thinking a lot about revising the place in a summer and tasting their Surinamese beer. Now I really have to reconsider...

Amazing. It was very quiet when we were in, and all 3 of us absolutely loved our meals. The gentleman serving us was very helpful, offering to explain dishes if we needed, and we didn't feel rushed when trying to make our minds up.

The portion sizes are large, so bear this in mind when ordering! But the quality is fantastic and the value for money is great.

We got the Chicken Satey bami and nasi as well as a chicken roti plate to share.

The chicken satey took a little while to get to the table, but our server had told us it was being freshly prepared on the grill, and it was so worth the time we waited!

My partner, who was unsure of the style of cuisine as he had never had it before, said that he would have that chicken satey again!

If you are in Amsterdam this is one of the places I would highly recommend you visit.

We will when...

Very slow service and weird vibes, I could hear the people in the kitchen complaint to each other. While the place was almost empty, I had to wait 35 minutes for 4 roti meals, and then found out they mistakenly prepared roti rolls instead. The 4 euro dawet I ordered during waiting first wasn’t available because it was frozen(?), then it came, but it didn’t have the jellies, just the juice. The guy behind the counter was friendly and apologized for the long wait and wrong meals, he credited the drinks we had. The poor four tourists that were the only guests in the restaurant were waiting even longer, and hadn’t received any food when I left after 40 minutes. The roti rolls were fine, though the plates were a bit dry and thick. 12,50 for a roti roll with chicken and added egg is quite hefty, 1 euro more...