Ultimately
disappointing.
We had to seat ourselves. The tables are quite
awkwardly placed to get a double row of places, some tables are a bit
claustrophobic.
The waitress who came to serve us didn't speak Dutch,
then pointedly ignored our table for the rest of the evening.
The
service is slow, poor yet better than average in Amsterdam, which is saying
little as the average is appalling.
The
waiter when he came, gave us a lecture about waste, we were told not
to order all our food at once. We had to place our original order in
two lots instead of one – which I guess was nice in terms of them
being hot. But he never came back again. By the time I flagged
someone else to come and serve us the kitchen was closed and apparently the peppers, had run out anyway.
The guy
came back and offered tortilla 'as compensation'. I would never order
tortilla. Stupidly I accepted. The hot sauce with it, was nice but it was the worst tortilla I have ever had (except the one my mate Sue made with cold Dutch chips (frites),
made with mashed potatoes, tasteless, practically eggless so it fell apart with every
forking! So much for compensation
(and his good review) we were charged full price for it!!!
There
was flamenco singing and dancing at the back of the restaurant in a
private room but, no way to watch and eat, being hungry we chose to
eat and judging by the cheers missed a great show.
In
general, it is expensive, not particularly authentic (Croquettes
are more of a Dutch staple than Spanish surely) the service is
snail pace, except at the end when they want their money, though friendly. They clearly have a good client base and
support that, it seemed to me, to the detriment of trying to build or
extend it with their care of new customers.
The
lamb chops were good, minuscule but tasty, though two of the three
were over cooked to my taste. The veg was piping hot, over oiled and
undercooked which worked well with the mange tout, asparagus, paprika
and courgette but was a dismal failure with the aubergine.
No one can
make a mess of whitebait, it was a decent sized portion bearing in
mind that their tapas are overpriced. I am not keen on sardines, the
sauce was nice though there were some scales on both fish. The codfish croquttes tasted
excellent but they are still 90% spud and fairly uninteresting
eating. I didn't even bother with the second lot they brought instead of either the fried cheese or
prawn croquettes we actually ordered. My mates couldn't work out what they were made of... Vegetarian? Cheese? Spinach?
The menu said they had 2013 Syrah but they
served a bottle of 2011, with no excuse or apology and didn't mention that the bottom of the bottle was sediment laden. On the
bill they tried to charge us for an extra two glasses of wine in
addition to the bottle.
They
served my mineral water with ice (very irritating American habit)
without asking or coming back so I could get rid of it.
It is
not a bad restaurant and will remain very popular with the locals and
regulars. However for me, my maxim 'don't go out to eat in Amsterdam if you're hungry' still holds true. Here yet again the price to quality to service ratio,
while better than your average Amsterdam central location eatery
still leaves much to be desired.
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