Rotterdam cafes & restaurants
reviews index and recommendations
A Nous Deux, Stadhoudersweg 106, tel. 0622 546929
Recommendation: book the place for dinner with a group.
A Nous Deux is not a restaurant: it is a delicatessen, with French specialities from the Limousin region. However, rather than having to make do with take-away jars and bottles, it is also possible to arrange membership so you can book the place for an evening dinner with a group, in a single room with a large table that seats fourteen people. The decor is fairly minimal, but there is enough attention to detail that the atmosphere is excellent when there are enough people.
This is the perfect venue for a dinner with a dozen people, because not only does A Nous Deux have the kind of huge table that most restaurants do not have, but it is the only table in the place, which means there is no danger of suffering the terrible service that is so common elsewhere.
The food is traditional French cuisine, presented in a more home-cooked style than is common in French restaurants outside France. This is the Real Thing, and certainly a welcome change from places that give you a tiny portion with sauce artistically drizzled around the edge of the plate. On our last visit we had paté and a salad, followed by lamb with garlic, parsley and beans. The best was saved for last, though, with fresh nut bread and the kinds of cheeses that are worth driving hundreds of kilometres South for.
Our five-hour dinner, which included many bottles of a decent 2002 claret, came to about €60 per person, which is excellent value when you compare it to the other places in Rotterdam that have a similar level of food and service.
Last visit: 12 October 2007
Angelo Betti, Schiekade 6a, tel. 4658174
Recommendation: pizza and wine for dinner, and take-away ice-cream when you are passing.
Angelo Betti is the best Italian pizza restaurant in town, by a margin even larger than the pizzas. This is a very Italian establishment, run by the same family for years it seems, where the staff do not so much take your order as perform. This, and the fact that it is always busy, creates a lively atmosphere. The decor is also modern and stylish, and thankfully spares us the tacky trappings of some stereotypical Italian restaurant.
The menu is almost exclusively pizza, plus the extensive selection of home-made ice cream, but you will need a large appetite to try both. After many visits of wanting dessert but being too full after the pizza, we had to give in and do an ice-cream only visit. Perhaps the ice-cream is a better bet for take-away, whenever you walk past.
Getting a table requires a bit of hanging around, because there is never one free. It is always going to be 'fifteen minutes', but since that is fifteen Italian minutes the best plan is to get a carafe of wine and stand or sit at the bar and watch the bustle while you wait.
Last visit: 23 June 2007
Asian Glories, Leeuwenstraat 15, tel. 4117107
Try the specials that you would not normally see on a Chinese menu.
Despite the tacky name, Asian Glories may well be the classiest Chinese restaurant in town. Although there are others that have excellent food, as well as more expensive restaurants like this one that have better service, Rotterdam's Chinese restaurants rarely combine this level of food and service with a menu that includes more modern interpretations of traditional dishes.
Last visit: 21 March 2009
Bagel Bakery, Schilderstraat 57a, tel. 4121560
Recommendation: try it out until the waiting tries your patience.
Bagel Bakery is a stylish North American yuppie-style bagel cafe, which is pretty rare for Rotterdam. The decor has the same plain walls and high ceilings look as Urban Espresso Bar, but here there's actually enough space to make it really work. Urban Espresso Bar wins on the coffee, though: its Flat White is just ahead of Bagel Bakery's bowlful of frothy koffie verkeerd.
Most customers are here are for the bagels, which come with a great variety of adventurous but well-conceived fillings. Although Cappucino's plain bagels are arguably better, their menu is more basic than the likes of Bagel Bakery's cream cheese with carpaccio and roast peppers, even though it is now just as expensive. In a similar inversion of Cappucino's seating plan, the spacious interior seating here is supplemented by a small terrace in the summer, which is most pleasant. Bagel Bakery also has interesting specials on the blackboard from time to time, and the mezze is pretty good and features excellent hummus.
On my most recent visit, I noticed that the service has improved since last year, when you would be lucky to get what you actually ordered, however long the wait. Instead, the staff are now positively friendly.
Last visit: 24 March 2009
Bagels & Beans
Recommendation: test your patience elsewhere.
Bagels & Beans has somehow managed to take a good sunny location and its successful cafe chain, and open a cafe that is completely let down by its utterly useless staff. This goes far beyond the occasional poor service and rudeness that crops up from time to time in Rotterdam cafes, and instead seems to be the result of a systematic attempt to hire the worst staff available. We initially put this down to inexperienced staff when the cafe first opened, but the staff still behave as if this is their first day ever on the job, after days of sleep deprivation. On our last visit, only about half of the staff were entirely incompetent, so after asking various waitresses we eventually managed to get our coffee a mere twenty minutes after ordering it.
You almost have to admire how much the staff here do to avoid having to serve too many customers. As well as the basic techniques, such as walking as slowly as possible, hanging around aimlessly inside when the terrace is full, and only venturing outside for one transaction at a time, there are some clever tricks as well. For example, there are no menus on the table, so if you want to eat you have to wait at least four times: wait to be served so you can ask for a menu, wait for the menu, wait for the waitress to come back once you know what you want, and wait for the food. We even did worse than that, as we had to fetch our own menus from inside.
Unfortunately, the kitchen hygiene must be about as good as the service, as one of our bagels arrived with a hair on it. One of the especially dumb waitresses who I pointed this out to did not seem to have much of a clue what to do or say about this, and had to be rescued by a colleague who was at least able to work out that she should take the plate away and bring a replacement. An apology, of course, was clearly too much to expect.
The worst thing is that there are so few terraces in Rotterdam that this place might actually survive. Meanwhile, just go to Cappucino instead.
Last visit: 14 October 2007
Bazar, Witte de Withstraat 16, tel. 2065151
Recommendation: go in a group, but make sure you sit upstairs or outside.
Big and busy North African restaurant with an interesting menu and a lively, down-to-earth atmosphere. The food is pretty good, which it makes a change from getting a greasy take-away kebab. The first time I went there we were feeling lazy, so instead of studying the menu, we just ordered the lots-of-everything-for-two mixed grill, which was tasty and certainly filled us up.
These days I have three favourite dishes: El Cous cous - an excellent and huge cous cous dish with merguez sausage and veg, El Calamar - more seafood in a tomato sauce than you can shake a prawn at, and all-of-the-starters because they are all excellent - the most interesting choice if there are four or more of you. In any case, the hummus/humous is a must.
The biggest danger at Bazar, especially if you go with a group, is that you will end up on one of the dark tables at the back, or downstairs in the far worse dark and cramped basement, whose lack of ventilation is especially unbearable in the summer.
Peculiarity: the unusual collection of lamps over the stairwell.
Last visit: March 2009
Beyzade, Nieuwe Binnenweg 135, tel. 06 48780455
Recommendation: go for lunch and dinner and try everything.
Beyzade is a relatively new Turkish restaurant that took a chef from Nazar to offer a similar menu is slightly more hip surroundings. The menu, food, service, decor and atmosphere are all at least as good Nazar's, perhaps slightly better. So far this place remains pretty quiet, but it certainly competes well with Nazar, at least for us.
After our first evening meal, we went back for lunch a couple of times. As well as the hot and cold starters, and the grill and oven dishes, the soups are a welcome and tasty addition to the lunch menu, and the Su Böreği is excellent.
Last visit: 23 June 2007
Cafe Pol, Meent 46-48, tel. 4112335
Recommendation: go to De Witte Aap instead.
This cafe for the wannabe-posh thirty-plus crowd mixes smart old-fashioned decor and furniture with modern music and a slight atmosphere of exclusivitiy. This is an unusual mix for this part of town, a sort of town centre version of De Tuin, and just as popular. It is especially packed on weekend evenings that spread well outside in the summer. It is as though this is the place to be seen or something.
Unusually for a Rotterdam cafe, this place seems to have a very consistent public so you might just feel out of place if you forgot to wear a (suit) jacket or at least a polo shirt with the collar sticking up. The skateboarder who just popped in to ask something certainly attracted a lot of attention - friendly though. In any case, it is all good people-watching, even if it does feel like an episode of Ab Fab.
There is a menu, as it happens, but this is really a drinks place so the menu features a wide selection of sandwiches and toasties (€2-6) and bar snacks.
Last visit: 24 July 2007
Caffè Belmondo, Goudsesingel 52, tel. 4110784‎
Recommendation: lounge around with a few coffees, laptop optional.
Caffè Belmondo is an unusual find in Rotterdam - a big modern cafe, hidden away just outisde the centre on an otherwise uninspiring shopping street full of furniture shops. Caffè Belmondo is very similar to the average Caffe Nero in the UK, with a soft blue and dark brown wood theme, comfy seating, and a decent espresso macchiato. It has much more space than Coffee Company, but is perhaps correspondingly less cozy.
On our last Sunday visit, the place seemed almost deserted because it is so much bigger than most cafes in town, and because there were only about ten people there. You would think that there is free wi-fi, because eight of them had laptops.
Last visit: 7 March 2010
Cambrinus, Blaak 4, tel. 4146702
Recommendation: go to Locus Publicus for beer instead.
Good for: beer, drinking, beer, drinking beer
This Oude Haven bar has an excellent selection of beers, eight of which are on draught. They also serve cafe food, which I do not normally associate with a busy pub atmosphere. Cambrinus is certainly more popular than most of the other local bars, probably because its cosy interior is better suited to the dark winter evenings.
Cambrinus is also good in the summer, when the bar moves to its terrace out the back in the corner of Oude Haven. Cambrinus' terrace beats the others on account of its decent furniture and better selection of draught beers
The menu used to be better several years ago, but now the food really lacks the originality it used to have and the quality to justify its above-average prices: you can get a better €15 steak and chips elsewhere.
Last visit: 1 April 2009.
Cappucino, Korte Hoogstraat 23, tel. 4135872
Recommendation: see if it matches your taste, or go to Bagels and More for better value and more space.
Cappucino [sic] is the latest incarnation of this popular bagel cafe, previously Bagel Break and Gary's Muffins. In the few months since it opened, Cappucino become a much better cafe bringing a much more interesting atmosphere and better service (table-service even!) to a place that was already good. Since then, Cappucino has developed the style and decor even further, making this a truly great cafe.
The interior keeps the close-packed tables that Bagel Break had, and is still packed on weekend lunchtimes, but manages to remain comfortable despite the crowds.
The basis of this cafe are the bagels themselves, which are easily the best and most authentic of the several bagel places now in the centre of Rotterdam. The fillings are good, even if not as fancy as at Bagel Bakery, although there were signs of changes to the menu last time we visited, such as new home-made pesto, that merit further investigation.
The terrace, which is one of the better ones in the centre of town, is certainly a reason to look forward to summer. Best of all, recent improvements brought wind breaks, which make all the difference on such a windy corner.
Last visit: January 2007.
CoffeeStudio, Binnenrotte 77, tel. 2400088
Recommendation: fish club sandwich for lunch.
Coffee Studio is a great improvement on the previous cafes that have occupied this location. The cafe's bright colourful interior, the collection of pictures on the wall and the eclectic mix of cafe furniture are all much more cool than the previous interiors. What has not changed, of course, is that this side street of the busy Meent is just far enough around the corner to slightly less crowded than all of the other nearby cafes, which makes for a welcome escape from the weekend shopping frenzy.
On our first lunchtime visit we had sandwiches - the Spanish Serrano ham and the smoked trout were both excellent. Having also heard good reports from other people we went back to try the vegetarian quiche and a club sandwich, which were both impressively creative and tasty, and featured a generous side salad.
The best thing on the manu is probably the outrageously large and delicious fish club sandwich (€10.90), which is so well-filled that it is well worth the meal-sized price, unlike the comparatively meager offering for the same money at Hoofdstuk II. Needless to say, we have been back for the club sandwich several times, and have also enjoyed the excellent salads.
As well as the decent decor and food, the above-average service makes a great change from the competition, and seems to have largely survived Coffee Studio's rise to the popularity level of Urban Espresso Bar and Cappucino.
Last visit: 4 April 2009
Coopvaert, Blaak 776, tel. 2800303
Try the sun-trap terrace, or the fancy food and spacious interior.
Coopvaert is a new cafe in the big and open ground floor of the new tower block next to the Maritime Museum.
The interior is big, open and white, with well-spaced small tables and lots of warm wood. The bustle of the open kitchen, lots of flowers and cool music do well to stop the plece feeling empty. The terrace on Plein 1940 is also somewhat special, with the whole square and the maritime museum as backdrop, and sun all afternoon.
Our first visit was just a quick coffee, but the menu looked interesting enough for a more foody visit. Since it reopened, Coopvaert has new people and a new menu, but the same interior. This time around, it is more about the food, with a fancy restaurant menu (PDF) whose three three-course options (Û32.50/Û22.50) are almost the whole ˆ la carte menu.
The limited selection of meals includes plenty of interesting options when we went for dinner, so we had all three menus between us. The carpaccio was great: a generous portion with plenty of rucuola, and tasty pesto and capers. The fish main course - sole - was also good, but less interesting, like the chocolate dessert: nice, but nothing special.
Coopvaert is defeinitely worth a try, especially if you like the decor, but ultimately the food needs to be better to compete at this price; for the same money, we prefer to eat at Soit and Zinc.
Peculiarity: the menu features the most bizarre spelling mistakes, which you might think were deliberate if that were not so tacky: 'genocchi', 'pannacota', 'fettecini', 'jakki torri', 'harricote verts', 'compotte', 'kommer', and even 'Coopveart'.
Last visit: 5 June 2008
Daily Wok, Oude Binnenweg 106c, tel. 4112002
Recommendation: try take-away noodles when you have been to Dim Daily too often.
Daily Wok, opened in early 2005, is the best new fast food place to open in ages, serving rice and noodle dishes that are serious competition for Dim Daily. The main reasons why this place is great are the low prices (€4-6.50 for main dishes and €1.50-2.50 for side dishes) and the fast, friendly service. No long waits to order or near-starvation before being served.
The food itself benefits greatly for being stir-fried while you wait - fresh vegetables and tender meat that is much better that the reheated stuff that some cheap places serve. The decor is fresh too; its clean and bright modern style make this a nice place to eat in, if there is room - it is really small. Portions are smaller than at Dim Daily, but are still big enough to fill you up, and if you are really hungry the side dishes are pretty good.
Last visit: 22 November 2007.
De Kleine Ondeugd, Oostzeedijk 348, tel. 2130718
Recommendation: go somewhere else instead.
De Kleine Ondeugd is an interesting little Thai restaurant that has a fixed menu that features a different set of small dishes each time, all of which are good, some spicy, and some very spicy.
The restaurant is very small, so it is hard to get a table, and very hard if there are more than a few of you. If you do get a table, it's very cramped, so you can expect to have to compete for space with the diners at the next table. There is a terrace outside in the summer, which makes this easier.
Our last visit was spoiled by the miserable unattentive service. Dishes were unceremoniously dumped on the table with no eye contact or explanation of what the dishes were. The food also started badly: the pork saté was cold, which hardly improves saté sauce, and after that it took more than 45 minutes for the four of us to get our main courses. I could almost understand that for a huge group, or fancy à la carte dishes, but there is no excuse when you are serving the same four dishes to everyone in the restaurant.
The time before that, our visit was spoiled because they were not willing to accommodate someone in our group who does not eat meat. Even though the menu features seafood and vegetable dishes, the waiter refused to offer a meal without the meat dishes. In the end, we prefer restaurants that let us choose what we eat.
Last visit: 13 August 2008
De Pijp, Gaffelstraat 90, tel. 4366896
Recommendation: go for dinner and order fish, with port and cheese to follow.
Good for: food - traditional Dutch dinners
De Pijp is a small restaurant that opened in 1898. As well as being old, it is relatively quiet, and has a pleasant atmosphere. The blackboard menu has a surprisingly large selection of traditional fare, which almost makes up for Heineken being the only beer. Still, the house red wine is pretty good.
The food is excellent - quite refined in fact. The menu has lots of choice of traditional Dutch dishes, with a good selection of fish. We prefer the meat dishes, though, which seem to go better with the rich sauces and sautéed potatoes: favourites are the duck in port sauce and the wild boar stew.
The service is slightly French in the sense that sometimes you get what you are given, rather than what you actually wanted, and you order when the staff are ready, not when you are. This generally is not too much of a problem, as long as you know what to expect, but it did spoil one previous visit with a group. You could try complaining, but it will turn out to be all your fault.
Peculiarity: this place is Very Old, and has an extensive tie collection from its student fraternity connection.
Last visit: 3 November 2006.
De Volendammer, Coolsingel 107b, tel. 4121332
Recommendation: stop by and have fish or soup for lunch.
This above average fish bar is a good place to grab lunch on your way around town. There's a big menu, and the soup is recommended.
Peculiarity: fish and chips?
De Witte Aap
Recommendation: go for drinks, but avoid the late-night and weekend overcrowding.
De Witte Aap is probably the best bar in Rotterdam, except for when everyone goes there and makes it the tightest crush in Rotterdam, which is less good. Summer evenings are less bad, because the leafy Witte de Withstraat is one of the better places to have a terrace, and late afternoon wheat beer outside the Witte Aap is one of the better ways to start a summer evening.
Inside is a single small room that centres on the bar, and has a comfy bench around the big corner window at the front. This layout, and the good service from the barmen, make this a great place to sit at the bar for a few drinks. The choice of beer is nothing special, and there is no food to speak of, but that does not really matter because this bar is all about the atmosphere and the excellent music.
Last visit: March 2008
Deli-Chat, Karel Doormanstraat 332
Recommendation: go to Bagel Bakery instead if you are fussy about your bagels
After taking over Bagels & More, the new owner's did not change a whole lot more than the name of this bagel cafe. The interior and decor is the same kind of smart modern, but with just enough extra kitsch and clutter to spoil the effect, albeit with some nice plants. The menu, similarly, still features bagels, sandwiches and toasted sandwiches, but now has a few Asian snacks such as bari and chicken curry sandwiches. We tried a bagel and a salad, which were okay but nothing special. The ham and chives cream cheese filling was good, but the bagel was not great, and both its side-salad and the separate salad were both marred by the sort of overly-sweet prefab dressing that presumably sells well in Dutch supermarkets.
Our first visit was on a deserted weekday late-afternoon, which was nice and relaxing until someone decided to start using an incredibly loud high-pitched hoover in the customer area. What are these people thinking? They recovered someone on our next visit, with better service, taking advantage of not being too full to do table service, despite instructions to the contrary on the menu.
Last visit: 26 December 2007
Dim Daily, Rodenzand 48, tel. 2809026
Recommendation: order stir-fry and Chinese tea for lunch or an early dinner.
Dim Daily is a noodle bar that gets it right, managing to combine a good location, excellent food with fresh ingredients, good prices, reasonable speed and stylish decor. This isn't a place that does it for show - we have been to too many pretentious places with designer prices, rubbish food or both.
The best food is the fried noodle dishes, for which you choose from four kinds of noodles and one of ten or so ingredients. The bowls are big, the meat tender and the vegetables are fresh, crunchy and tasty. There is a similar selection of soups, more expensive rice-based meals and a large selection of starters, Dim Sum and sushi.
Peculiarity: free refils for the Chinese and Japanese tea
Last visit: July 2009.
Dizzy, 's-Gravendijkwal 127/129, tel. 4773014
Recommendation: go for drinks, stay for dinner, and check out the jazz evenings.
Dizzy is much better than the average eetcafe, with good food, an interesting menu, reasonable service and a great atmosphere. The menu is an imaginitive fusion affair, which is relatively rare in Rotterdam and makes a change from the usual nosh and the meat, veg or fish dish of the day is usually worth a look.
Dizzy is also a good place for lunch, with fantastic hot sandwiches, such as the Miles Davis stewed beef sandwich.
Best of all, though, is the atmosphere, which blends the liveliness of a popular and closely packed eetcafe with a more mellow jazz cafe feel that is much more evident on a quiet afternoon. Also, the garden out the back is a nice extra on a summer evening
Last visit: October 2008
Dudok, Meent 88, tel. 4333102
Recommendation: have a drink at the bar and cake to take-away, but do not bother with dinner.
Dudok is a grand cafe in the sense that it is a single huge space. The busy atmosphere makes up for the relatively plain decor; the food is quite imaginative although the quality is fairly run of the mill. Anyway, the choice on the menu, the handy location and the likelihood of getting a table make it worth a visit.
On the down side, Dudok features the most spectacularly slow service imaginable. The waiters and waitresses seem to be highly trained in avoiding eye contact or any other interaction with customers. This is a problem unless you don't care at all how long it takes: at lunch time you can forget about being in and out for lunch within an hour, and in the evening it takes several hours for four people to have a two-course dinner.
The best way to experience Dudok and avoid the poor service is to sit at the bar and have drinks. There is usually space, the bar service is good, the atmosphere is relatively smoke-free and there is a fairly good selection of beers on tap.
Peculiarity: the sinks in the toilets have beer taps.
Last visit: 5 April 2008
Dunya Lokanta, Proveniersstraat 40a, tel. 2430669
Recommendation: go for dinner with two or three people and try to resist ordering the whole menu.
Dunya Lokanta is one of relatively few Turkish restaurants in Rotterdam in the stylish eetcafe category. The inevitable comparison is the similarly popular Nazar, which has similar prices and menu, albeit in a different atmosphere. Dunya has a more traditional feel than Nazar's more modern city style and decor.
The food is good and the menu slightly more interesting than at Nazar, because there are more oven dishes at Dunya, although Nazar is better value. My beef and aubergine stew (€11.75) was good as was the folded pizza I had on my next visit.
The service is not great, mainly because it was frustratingly slow when we wanted the waiter's attention, on more than one visit. This was especially annoying on our last visit because we already hungry when we arrived, so we did not really appreciate having to wait so long to order. Perhaps that is why I was not especially amused when the waiter told us off for calling it a Turkish restaurant; the menu says 'dishes from Mesopotamia and Anatolia', and Anatolia was in Turkey when I last checked.
Last visit: 3 April 2008.
Entrée, Karel Doormanstraat 352, tel. 4331848‎
Recommendation: go for a relaxed an tasty lunch, inside or outside.
Entrée is a rare find - an excellent lunch cafe in a town centre full of dreary and/or awful places to eat. Entrée boasts that rare combination of a pleasant environment, an excellent menu and good service. For lunch, we particularly like the elaborate club sandwich, which uses decent bread rather than the cheapest possible sliced stuff, and the large salads.
Entrée is also good for dinner; it has been a while since we tried it but the lasagne was great - far more refined than the usual eetcafe version.
Last visit: 4 September 2008
Floor, Schouwburgplein 28, tel. 4045288
Recommendation: go for lunch, and sit in the garden in the summer.
Floor is a cafe-brasserie with a modern style and a fairly chic atmosphere, with a fairly stylish interior and a smart, often trendy, crowd eating in pairs or drinking in groups. The last two times we went for lunch there was a scattering of people in suits, while evenings often include the theatre crowd and no empty tables at all. We prefer Floor when it is empty, with far better service and without the thick clouds of smoke.
The lunch menu is nicely varied, with basic sandwiches and some excellent more fancy ciabattas and the like. There are also hot dishes that we have not tried. Floor scores in the summer, when you can sit outside in the large garden behind the cafe. Surrounding buildings make this a sheltered sunny spot, and there is plenty of space to sit around and enjoy a long lunch.
Unfortunately, Floor occasionally ruins its advantages with appallingly bad service. On our last visit, the four of us were brought three wrong sandwiches, out of the four we ordered. The waiter then turned what may have been a simple mistake into a bad experience by trying to tell us that it was our fault and even started pointing at the menu.
Last visit: March 2008
Gamasot, Pannekoekstraat 103a, tel. 2133048
Recommendation: give it a try when you want a change from Dim Daily.
Although Gamasot has been here for some time, we did not try it until our recent discovery of Daily Wok encouraged us to try more Dim Daily alternatives. Gamasot is a Korean cafe, so the food is also a little alternative if you are only used to Chinese food, but recognisable. We really enjoyed the stir-fried rice dish with an egg on top and miso soup on the side. The new thing for me was the kimchi - a kind of spicy cold cabbage side-dish, which I gather comes in many varieties.
The food was great, overall, and the service excellent. The prices are more or less the same as at Dim Daily, so Gamasot loses out only by having a less comforatble atmosphere - like a harshly-lit snack bar. On balance, this place is definitely worth a try, and I shall go back, but probably only for a change when I have been to Dim Daily too much.
Het Gelagh De Boer Buyten, Witte de Withstraat 40b, tel. 2400333
Recommendation: go for dinner, but not in a big group.
Het Gelagh is a fairly upmarket eetcafe style restaurant that serves an unusual selection of Dutch dishes with a Caribbean influence, or perhaps the other way around. The food is great, which along with the warm cosy interior makes this place worth a visit when you want something more fancy than Opa across the street, but with a similar atmosphere.
The main annoyance at Het Gelagh is that it is so cramped. It is fine for two, but on a previous visit with four people we had a table at the front that was not big enough, so there was no room to sit comfortably. The two tables at the very back are even worse. Our last visit was better, since the six of us had enough space, and we had a good experience because of the excellent service.
Peculiarity: you get Cinerama cinema discount tickets with your bill.
Last visit: 14 May 2008
Hoofdstuk II, Oostmolenwerf 14/24, tel. 4148222
Recommendation: worth a try for lunch or dinner.
Hoofdstuk II is a large traditional-style cafe with a bookish theme ('hoofdstuk' means 'chapter') and lots of books-as-decor amongst the wood panelling. The style of the place makes for a good ambiance, so this is a pleasant place for drinks or food.
The menu has the same kind of upmarket cafe prices as Het Gelagh - somewhere between average and posh - but with more conventional European dishes.
Weekday lunchtimes attract a large business crowd from the offices on Admiraliteitskade, and the lunch menu has a large selection of sandwiches and egg dishes for around €7. Top of the lunch menu is the €9.75 salmon club sandwich that we tried; it turned out to be very tasty with lots of smoked salmon, but not as good value as the more reasonably priced baguette or omelet options.
It has been a while since we tried dinner here; the food was good, and fairly sophisticated. There is also an above-average selection of beer on tap.
Last visit: 26 July 2007
Hotel New York, Koninginnenhoofd 1, tel. 4390500
Recommendation: go by boat, with visitors to Rotterdam, for lunch or dinner.
Good for: food, groups for lunch, borrel or dinner
Hotel New York is a large fish and seafood restaurant in the hotel on the quay where the liners for New York used to set sail. It's a big restaurant with a good atmosphere, and fairly classy decor. There are a lot of tables, so the busy nights are very busy.
The food was delicious and fairly upmarket, but the dishes are fairly simple. This is particularly appropriate for the high-quality seafood dishes. However, for the money you can get better food elsewhere in Rotterdam. This place is more about style than value, especially if you get there by water taxi.
Hotel New York is a good place to bring visitors from out of town, because it shows off Rotterdam and the Maas quite well, and is not the kind of place you can find everywhere. This is also a good place to go for drinks with a large group, since the bar area is pretty big, and serves slightly more interesting fish and seafood fried bar snacks than the average cafe.
Peculiarity: the bridge of a ship in the middle of the restaurant.
Last visit: November 2005
Indonesia Satebar, Rodezand 34, tel. 4148588
Recommendation: go for dinner when you fancy Indonesian food.
Restaurant Indonesia have come up with a good competitor to Dim Daily with their downstairs Indonesia Satebar. It is a stylish place with modern decor and a great atmosphere, which is a great improvement on the traditional and more boring retaurant upstairs.
The menu is a simplified version of the full menu upstairs, and is more oriented towards straightforward manageable dishes than the whole rijsttafel blow-out. The food, value and service, however, remain excellent. For example, the chicken sate with soy-sauce (€7) was tender and tasty, with a deliciously spicy sauce, and fresh salad.
Best of all, for the summer, is the air-conditioning - a rare luxury in Rotterdam.
Last visit: 14 June 2008
Koosie, Witte de Withstraat 51a, tel. 4142266
Recommendation: go for a hearty but refined dinner.
Koosie, opened in 2008, takes Witte de Withstraat upmarket with excellent traditional-style food, of the kind that we have previously enjoyed at Zinc. With its smart decor, dark wooden tables and lack of noise, Koosie achieves the same classy but informal atmosphere that is so successful at other good restaurants in Rotterdam, such as Soit and Look. Koosie also has excellent service, which you do not usually find in the cheaper restaurants.
On both visits, we could not resist the huge beenham (leg of pork), served on the bone with asparagus, which tasted great and fell off the bone with the slightest prod of the fork. The steak was also excellent, also with tasty potatoes and sauce, but the pork is a dish that we have not seen anywhere else in Rotterdam and is itself a good enough reason to try this place out. The starters and desserts we had were also good, and the large selection of fish on the specials board got our attention, so there will be plenty of menu to explore on future visits.
Peculiarity: 'Koosie' is the name of the owner's cat, which probably explains the various feline iconography.
Last visit: 29 October 2008
Little V, Grotekerkplein 109, tel. 4131191
Recommendation: try the terrace for lunch, but only if you get bored with Dim Daily
Little V is interesting because there is not much Vietnamese food in Rotterdam, and because it is the first restaurant to take advantage of the newly-renovated square around the St Laurenskerk with its lounge-style terrace.
The food, which mainly consists of small dishes plus rice or noodle main courses, is not bad but nothing special. The experience is hardly improved by the uneven service: some staff seem to know what they are doing, while others were just slow and unfriendly. Ultimately, Little V fails the Dim Daily test, since there you get better food and service for less money. Little V only really scores with its terrace.
There is an unexpected cocktail menu, which we have not tried and which might be interesting. However, we doubt it because the coconut juice option gets mixed with Malibu, which is like putting Fanta in orange juice: someone either has wrong ideas about making cocktails, or just likes them too sweet, is just lazy, or all of the above.
Last visit: 4 August 2009
Grand Café-Restaurant Loos, Westplein 1, tel. 4117723‎
Recommendation: go for a working lunch.
Loos is one of the few places in Rotterdam with a grand café interior, but more formal and with less character than Wester Paviljoen, which reflects the part of town it is in - lots of suits on a week day lunch time, and more white wine than beer. As at WP, the lunch menu covers a broad range, from sandwiches and soups to burgers and pasta.
We tried the pasta of the week (€8.50), which was spinach and ricotta cannelloni, and the chicken and bacon club sandwich (€6.50); both were reasonable but nothing special.
There is also a more fancy restaurant section, which we have not tried.
Last visit: 19 March 2010
Lux, 's-Gravendijkwal 133, tel. 4762206
Recommendation: go for an excellent expensive dinner.
Good for: expensive and excellent Italian food
Lux is a great place to go if you love Italian food and want to splash out on. It is one of the more expensive restaurants that we have been to in Rotterdam, being about twice as expensive as most eetcafes, but well worth a visit. The difference is in the menu's quality and originality, the service and the space you get to yourself.
Last visit: October 2008.
Marcus Exotic, Weena 709, tel. 4147142
Marcus Exotic is a cheap and colourful Surinamese restaurant where eating-in with your broodje is actually appealing, with a more relaxed summery atmosphere than Warung Mini. The prices are barely more than at a take-away, which makes for a cheap sit-down lunch.
The Surinaamse broodjes are good, as was the Saoto chicken soup I had. Portions are not big, though, so you may need to order a couple of dishes if you are really hungry.
Melief-Bender, Oude Binnenweg 134b, tel. 4145456
Good for: drinks
Melief-Bender is a very Dutch bar, where you almost feel obliged to sit at the bar with your mates and drink normal beer, rather than anything fancy. The atmosphere and crowd seem to vary a lot, but this bar has that certain something that makes sitting around for hours drinking beer and chatting seem the most normal thing in the world.
Shockingly, the layout changed at some point in 2004, with some of the tables removed to make more standing room, and new round standing tables added. This is no bad thing, as it was often cramped before.
Last visit: 25 May 2007
Mockamore, Korte Hoogstraat 6, tel. 2409509‎
Go to Coffee Company instead.
Mockamore has opened another cafe, not far from its pokey little cousin on Beursplein. The new place takes Mockamore into Starbucks territory with the standard ingredients: choice of coffee sizes, no table service, brown and beige decor and big black-and-white photos. The result is not bad, but perhaps only by Rotterdam standards, and less convincing than Coffee Company.
Last visit: 12 December 2007
Nazar, Schiedamse Vest 12, tel. 4046074
Good for: dinner, open after 9 pm
Nazar serves excellent Turkish food in what is a very pleasant restaurant; it's actually pretty cool, rather than tacky, and has a better vibe than Bazaar. Nazar works best for two to four people, because service can seem slow when there are more of you. It wasn't all bad for our group of thirteen, though: the food was just as good and all came at the same time.
Nazar is also good for very hungry people who want to fill up on one of the delicious oven dishes - I have had the excellent guveç etli (stew) several times - and who will not spoil their appetites on the tempting bread and dip.
I have now been to Nazar for dinner so many times that it has overtaken Opa for my most regular spot. This is largely because not only does it have a wide selection of tasty good-value food that is better than at Opa, but it is a really chilled out place to sit around and eat. Somehow, it is as unimposing as eating at the kitchen table at home, and works well whatever your mood. That makes Nazar a great choice if you cannot decide where you want to eat out.
Last visit: 24 October 2008.
Nostra, Van Oldebarneveldtstraat 127a, tel. 4118232
When I returned to Rotterdam after being inspired by lots of exploration in Madrid, I decided to try a new cafe. The Illy sign led me to this one, and the cosy wooden looks drew me inside. The interior is odd, with so much varnished wood that it is almost more yacht than cafe. Past the bar, the seating at the back is split level, which gives the upstairs tables a good position. This is all very nice, as is the service, but ultimately the style is too pretentious for my taste - the cafe equivalent of too much make-up, fake hair and lots of gold jewellery.
Unfortunately, the lunch menu does not save the place from the cheesiness of its presentation - the sandwiches are spectacularly unimaginative and the rest is hardly distinctive. I can only suppose that this place set out to be expensive, perhaps to appeal to a certain crowd, and then decorated with more money than taste or design talent. The menu, meanwhile, must have been an afterthought or something.
You might as well avoid this place, unless it is part of your social scene, and get better food at Open.
Last visit: 27 July 2007
Opa, Witte de Withstraat 49a, tel. 4130094
Good for: drinks, dinner - kitchen open after 9 pm
Although Opa seems to be just another eetcafe, I have eaten there more times than I can remember. This is probably because it is better than the competition in almost all the key areas: atmosphere, menu, service, location and value for money. Only the food is merely average.
Opa also scores well as a bar, with its lively party atmosphere at weekends, and the occasional opportunity to order caipirinhas.
Peculiarity: all the pictures of old men on the walls - geddit?
Last visit: May 2008
Open, Jacobusstraat 215, tel. 2136257
Good for: coffee, lunch
Open is a chilled-out cafe with decent sandwiches, salads and toasted sandwiches. It is also the girliest cafe in town, with lots of pink and flowers. And girls.
There are quite a few places that make a good sandwich, and have a toaster, but Open is more interesting that most because the menu is far more creative, and the food correspondingly more interesting. For example, last time we had the excellent pumpkin soup, which is better than what you get in most places. Service was also good, completely unlike how extremely slow it used to be, so I think I will be going back more often now, especially since all of the bagel places in town have gone downhill.
We went to Open in the evening once, which was good: an evening meal that we started off with soup, followed by fancy pasta dishes. Still, it remains more of a lunch cafe, which is what it is good at, rather than a place to go in the evening.
Last visit: April 2008.
Panini, Binnewegplein 7c, tel. 4046865
Good for: take-away sandwiches
These are the best sandwiches in town - Italian rolls with elaborate and tasty fillings. Each choice has several ingregients, with lots of herbs and oil, making it nothing like the more run-of-the-mill sandwiches you get elsewhere. There are also slices of pizza, which I've never tried.
Service can be slow, because the sandwiches take a while to assemble, and because the rolls get heated up first. I never seem to mind, because the (usually) all-Italian staff are friendly and cheerful.
Peculiarity: it's still worth queueing for a sandwich no matter how long you have to wait.
Last visit: September 2005
Papaya, Groenendaal 37f, tel. 2330063
Good for: Indonesian food, take-away
Papaya recently renovated its interior and reinvented itself as the best Indonesian restaurant in Rotterdam, with excellent food and service so good it's almost embarrassing, in somewhere with such low prices.
The new interior design has done just enough with lighting and decoration to make a pleasant atmosphere, thankfully avoiding the tempation to simply fill the place with junk. Until the end of 2002 we used to go to Papaya just for the food, not minding the bare take-away-style atmosphere; now we go once a week because it's our favourite place near Oostplein.
Peculiarity: if you don't want to use the menu you can point at dishes behind the deli-counter in the take-away section, and pay by weight.
Last visit: 9 October 2007.
Parket, Nieuwe Binnenweg 9, tel. 4361655
Recommendation: go for drinks and try the cocktails.
Parket used to be a nice seedy bar, so it was a surprise when its recent renovation turned it into a cool modern bar that rivals De Witte Aap. Parket is a popular popular place, but there is usually still room to squeeze in at the bar to guzzle cocktails, even at midnight on a Friday. The caipirinhas and mojitos are rather good, as it happens.
As well as good cocktails, Parket has good furniture, with a sofa inside and plenty of seats on the terrace outside that takes over the pavement on weekend evenings.
Parket shares various things with Stalles next door, such as owners the toilets at the back, but otherwise they are quite different bars. Probably market segmentation, or something.
Last visit: 30 May 2008
Popocatepetl, Oude Haven, tel. 4120364
Good for: nothing
This Mexican restaurant just isn't good enough - go to Pssst Amigo if you want cheap Mexican food. Popocatepetl probably relies on its good location for popularity in the summer. I actually had to ask my colleagues to teach me a new Dutch phrase so that I could be sufficiently sarcastic to the waiter who made me wait a really long time for my second Margherita. The food was pretty good, but not as good` as Pssst Amigo, which has a much better atmosphere.
Before I became opinionated enough to refuse, I actually went back a second time because I was with a group who didn't know better. The service and food were actually worse that time, so now I wouldn't go near the place unless I'd had far too many beers in Cambrinus to be able to formulate a coherent objection (but that was another story altogether).
Peculiarity: being unusually mundane and having poor food and service.
Last visit: 2002
Prachtig, Willemsplein 77, tel. 2130640‎
Recommendation: enjoy the terrace in the summer.
Prachtig reopened in 2008 with a greatly expanded terrace, with better furniture, making this the most impressive terrace in Rotterdam, with its unequalled view of the river Maas, and unobstructed all-day sun. Apart from the surrounding buildings, what makes the view so interesting is that there is so much going on, with constant river traffic of barges, pleasure boats, the Dordrecht Fast Ferry, and other shipping.
On our last visit, we enjoyed the prompt cheerful service, and drinks that came within five minutes. We ordered from the fairly standard lunch menu, which includes sandwiches, egg dishes, salads and burgers. The food was good, even if not especially interesting, but good value considering the top location.
Last visit: 30 August 2008
Pssst Amigo, Stadhuisplein 17, tel. 4138180
Good for: food - dinner with big groups
The atmosphere here was quite bright and lively, and the food, value and service are not bad, provided that you have never been to a proper restaurant. The same goes for the Margheritas, which are a pleasant alternative to lemonade, but have little to do with an actual cocktail. That probably does not matter to the young crowd who are here more for the group atmosphere or for dates. The menu has a reasonable selection of Mexican-style dishes that are not especially good, but then there is not much in the way of competition in Rotterdam.
This small chain of Mexican restaurants also has a branch in Delft, which was comparable when we tried it years ago.
Peculiarity: big plastic cacti.
Last visit: 2006
Restaurant Fred, Honingerdijk 263-265, tel. 2120110‎
Recommendation: go for a very special occasion.
Restaurant Fred is a very expensive restaurant with one Michelin star that is so good that it is worth saving up for. The food is French cuisine with modern and Dutch influences, with local and seasonal ingredients, put together with the kind of skill and creativity that makes the star well-earned.
The fixed-price four-course evening menu costs a relatively reasonable €60 plus around €35 for accompanying wines, but you can spend a lot more than this à la carte, especially with all of the nice extras available, such as a Champagne trolley to start with and a well-stocked cheese trolley later on. In other words, count on €100-200 per head.
Apart from the amazing food and correspondingly good wines, everything else was perfect. The staff are bright and friendly, rather than formal and invisible, which fits well the ambiance; the sommelière was especially entertaining.
Last visit: 11 March 2010
Restaurant Indonesia, Rodezand 34, tel. 4148588
Good for: food - lots of it
A fairly normal-looking Asian restaurant, this place does excellent food. Needless to say, the set menus are gargantuan, but there are a couple of good value menus for one. That is just as well if you cannot be bothered to try and decode the rest of the menu.
After having been to Papaya so much since my first visit, we know what we like now, so on our last visit here we ordered single dishes from the menu and ended up with a much more reasonably sized and priced meal with excellent food.
Peculiarity: the spectacularly unimaginative name.
Last visit: 19 May 2006
Ristorante O ‘Pazzo’, Mariniersweg 90, tel. 2827107
Good for: food - pizza, but not good service
I only got to eat in the cafe-bar section of this big Italian restaurant the first time I went, because the posher restaurant bit was fully booked. This place is definitely popular, and has great pizza. Since then, we have been back and eaten in the 'restaurant' bit, where the food is much posher. The wonderful atmosphere and the good food made up for the slightly chaotic service, making our later repeat visit inevitable.
Although many previous visits have been spoiled by bad service, our last visit benefitted from prompt and friendly treatment from all of the serveral staff who served us. This many explain the current popularity: on our last Monday-evening visit, both sides of the restaurant were packed.
The pizza is very good, at a similar level to Angelo Betti, Gusto and La Pizza, and there is a good selection of interesting combinations. We especially enjoyed the two excellent tomato-free options: Casa Bianca - raw ham with mozarrella and rucola, and Pancetta - bacon, ricotta and spinach.
The decor in O ‘Pazzo’ is pretty special, and going to the toilet is a very calming experience, with the candle-lit wine cellar and classical music. The best way to appreciate the atmosphere, then is to pop in for drinks with friends, order on your way past the bar, get a bottle of wine or two so you can serve yourself when you run out, and pay at the bar on the way out to avoid trying to get an actual bill.
Peculiarity: fantastic sculptures.
Last visit: 10 August 2009
Rotown, Nieuwe Binnenweg 19, tel. 4362669
Good for: lunch, drinks, loud music, lots of people
Rotown is a great bar, but a less interesting place to eat. The bar is one of the places 'where everyone goes' at the weekend, and is always packed. Alternatively, this is also a good place for relaxed late-afternoon drinking. The menu is interesting in that it is fairly unconventional, but the meals themselves are less than inspired, a little like student cooking.
The lunch menu, although not especially creative, does feature some pretty good basic sandiches and egg dishes. The service is not bad either, although it can be slow if you are at the back of the lounge room rather than in the main bar, but it is this choice of very different rooms and the popular terrace that make Rotown a good place for lunch.
Rotown really comes into its own later in the evening, when it is packed with people drinking, looking and listening to the loud music. Then it is clear that the restaurant is not what they are best at, and the chilled out afternoon atmosphere is just incidental. So despite this place having bar, restaurant and cafe modes, it is a hard-core rock bar at heart.
Room for improvement: Rotown would be better if the lunch menu were more creative, or if the dishes of the day were available at lunchtime.
Last visit: 5 July 2007
Safir, Vijf Werelddelen 91 G, tel. 4862318
Tagine or cous-cous, for plenty of tasty food.
Safir is a well-deserved survivor on the not-quite-busy-enough Kop van Zuid. The friendly service and excellent food make this place well worth a visit.
On our visit, we sat in the light upstairs room with a big group. Downstairs, the intimately-lit brick-cellar area would be better for a smaller number of people or a date.
Last visit: 4 September 2008
Shanghai City, Jacques Dutilhweg 481, tel. 2024328
Last night we left the centre of Rotterdam for the bleak out-of-town wastelands of Prinsenland. Among the many cuboid structures is this rather large restaurant, which contains a Chinese restaurant downstairs and a Japanese restaurant upstairs. The style is very modern in an uncertain kind of way, as though different designers were given different corners; the end result sits somewhere between cool-trendy and eighties-tacky. I wasn't sure whether to be glad that there was no pianist on this quiet Monday night - I can't guess what he'd play on the big grand piano in the middle of the room.
The main event was naturally the food: three of us had the Beijing menu (€27.50), which was several absolutely gorgeous courses that, naturally enough, we couldn't finish. The highlight for me is always the crispy duck in pancakes at the start, but the subsequent duck soup and the fish, prawns and meat main courses were just as good.
The only thing better than the food was the service, which probably reflects the price more than some freak occurrence. A welcome change from the norm, nonetheless, and it's that and the food that make a place like this worth it once in a while.
Verdict: good value for money if you want better Chinese food, and probably a good choice for a business dinner if you work in the area. Top tip: come here for take-away once a week!
Last visit: July 2004.
Sijf, Oude Binnenweg 115, tel. 4332610
Good for: drinks, lunch, dinner
Sijf has the same ownership and brown-cafe style as the now-defunct Tastoe did, but is much bigger, and its location gives it a different atmosphere. If anything, Sijf does better at building the old-fashioned design into a convincing and coherent concept. This is a good compromise between authentically run-down, like some old dive, and totally fake-old, like a newly-opened Irish pub.
By day, Sijf is a good lunch cafe with an excellent terrace, by Rotterdam standards. The lunch menu features tasy and interesting sandwiches (€4.80), soup (€4.50/4.70), salads (€7) and the usual egg dishes and unspecified toasted sandwiches. Our sandwiches were excellent, with thick brown bread, and nuts and rucola on the side. I enjoyed the beef carpaccio with salad and mustard mayo, and on my last visit the smoked salmon with dill and cream cheese was even better on account of having lots of wasabi. By night the suits move in and it becomes more of a yuppie wine bar, with decent evening meals.
Sijf really needs a national smoking ban, because there is so little ventilation that even when it is quiet it is disgustingly smoky. Fortunately, it was not so bad at the table by the door on our last visit.
Sijf is best on a sunny lunchtime, when busy chatter mixes with music and sunlight on the wood to make a lively but relaxing atmosphere, or in the winter when it is freezing outside and cosy and packed inside.
Last visit: 10 May 2008
Simply Bread, Oude Binnenweg 122, tel. 2827192
Good for: lunch
Simply Bread is part of a new clothes-stylist-cafe combo that is the first new sign of Oude Binnenweg's inevitable yuppification since Daily Wok opened.
As a cafe, Simply Bread is a bold step that ultimately does not work very well, because the shop and its associated noise spoils the cafe atmosphere, which ends up looking good but lacking calm and warmth.
The menu is good, with a big variety of about 20 interesting sandwiches, including a club focaccia, five bagels and lots of vegetarian options. The hummus bagel is especially good.
Soit, s-Gravendijkwal 136b, tel. 4363114‎
Recommendation: go for dinner, on a date, or with friends or colleagues.
Soit is an excellent French restaurant that has achieved a perfect balance in several areas. The food is of excellent quality, while less expensive than at many of the other upmarket town-centre restaurants, and the dishes are interesting without being weird or unrecognisable.
You also get enough to eat - main courses tend to come with potatoes and side salad. In fact, unless you are really hungry, you should resist the delicious hot chocolate soufflé because you also get sweet nibbles with coffee.
The service is attentive but friendly, and the overall atmosphere is class but still somehow informal, which both combine to make a very relaxed atmosphere that still works when you want to entertain business customers, say, or a date.
Interestingly, Soit is in many ways similar to Restaurant Look, two doors down, but we prefer Soit because the whole experience seems slightly more comfortable: try both. Overall, Soit is one of the places that you could go to every week without getting bored of the place, or the menu, or finding it to be a hassle.
Last visit: 22 September 2009
Staal, Beursplein 33, tel. 4443494
Recommendation: pop in for coffee, or try the Mockamore on Korte Hoogstraat.
In the summer, Staal is mostly about its large sun-trap terrace, which is popular despite the awful service we had on our first visit. This was something of a contrast to our next visit later in the year, when we sat inside. The interior is from the same dark wood, beige and cream school of design as Lloyds, but this time as a small cafe bar. On a quiet Tuesday afternoon there were few customers inside downstairs, good service and funky music that provided a rather pleasant backdrop to the window-table views of shoppers dashing across Beursplein.
By the end of October we had almost forgotten the terrible service on the huge terrace in the middle of the summer, which rather spoilt Rotterdam's best sun-trap. So, it was time to have a look inside. The interior is from the same dark wood, beige and cream school of design as Lloyds, but this time as a small cafe bar. There is a separate restaurant upstairs, which you cannot help but be curious about with so many of the staff coming and going between the two, via the cafe's front door.
On a quiet Tuesday afternoon there were few customers, good service and funky music that provided a rather pleasant backdrop to the window-table views of shoppers dashing across Beursplein.
This time around, then, Staal turns out to be a good place for afternoon coffee, so perhaps it is worth coming back to investigate lunch, or the live music at 3 p.m. on Sundays.
On our last visit, the downstairs cafe was closed, so we went upstairs for a coffee in the much larger first-floor cafe-restaurant, which opens on to the foyer of the World Trade Center. At the end of a Saturday afternoon this was a varied mix of chattering shoppers and couples, instead of the WTC suits that inhabit the place on weekday early evenings.
The decor is not as nice upstairs; too many clashing light-brown colours and too little contrast, combined with the random furniture layout, conflict with the otherwise strict modern style. The end result is a strange atmosphere that does not feel quite right. The area around the bar is better, though, making this a good place for after-work drinks.
Last visit: May 2008
Stalles, Nieuwe Binnenweg 11a, tel. 4361655
Recommendation: go for an evening's drinking, and then try lunch the next day.
Stalles is one of the more accessible small bars on Nieuwe Binneweg despite the grungy atmosphere, which survived the refurbishment. Unfortunately, the large single malt whisky selection and individual whisky lockers did not. Being small, there is not much room to sit down when it is busy - you are more likely to be standing at the bar unless you are there to indulge in some afternoon drinking.
Unexpectly, perhaps, this is a good place to eat. Sandwiches, decent pizzas and excellent lasagne are available from 1730 to 2100 (2200 Thursday - Saturday), with €5 pizzas on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Of course, Stalles remains best as a popular night-time bar that is less trendy than De Witte Aap and less grungy than De Consul, finding a popular niche between the two.
Last visit: 22 August 2008
Tai Ka Lok, West Kruiskade 9b, tel. 4333885
Tai Ka Lok, formerly known as Yang Sweetie, is a no-frills Chinese small restaurant that looks like it has got its original 1960s decor and flourescent lights. Clean, busy and friendly, with thirty packed-in seats. The noodles were okay, but fast rather than freshly cooked. The menu unexpectedly included a lot of Surinamese dishes, but the veggie roti was not especially good.
What makes this place worth coming back to are the Surinaamse broodjes - the cha sieuw one is excellent.
This could be a good place for late-night food, though, because the kitchen is open until 0030, and 0130 at weekends.
Last visit: March 2008
Tai Wu, Mauritsweg 24-26, tel. 4330828
Tai Wu is one of the better Chinese restaurants in the centre of Rotterdam, and is unusual because it is so huge. The size makes it the ideal place to go with a dozen people, all sit around one big round table, and order twice as much food as you can reasonably eat. The food is great, and the novelty of spinning the dishes round on the big turntable that you get on the big round table probably never wears off.
On another visit, we tried a different approach - there were just three of us, we sat on a small table, and managed to individually order a normal amount of food, choosing things we like. This was also a lot of fun, because when you are not with your own big group you have more time to notice the rest of the hectic activity in the restaurant.
I have only been to Tai Wu when it was busy and hectic - it may always be this way, and although the service seems hurried it is actually very good. This good service, the excellent atmosphere and the good food make this place well worth a visit. However, the food is better at Orient, across the road near the corner of West Kruiskade, so go there too if you can get a table.
Terra Ferma, Vasteland 42, tel. 2334999‎
Terra Ferma is the Italian cafe-deli that serves the best sandwiches in Rotterdam. There is a choice of about 20 sandwiches on a choice of large freshly-baked rolls, with some delicious ingredients from the Italian deli. Our favourites are the Bari - parma ham, mozzarella and pesto - and the grilled aubergine one.
You order at the counter, which is unconventional, but the staff are friendly and efficient and there is no waiting ten minutes for you coffee. We think this is a good thing, if it means being able to go for lunch without it taking all day.
There is plenty of room to sit down, in a big open space with plenty of tables and daylight from double-height windows at the front. The decor is fairly plain, but stylish with it.
Terra Ferma never seems to be particularly packed, perhaps because most people get take-away, and because there are few shops nearby. Or perhaps everyone just faxes in their orders for delivery (minimum order €20), which went down very well at the office when we did it. Too bad you cannot order by e-mail.
Last visit: 9 August 2008
Urban Espresso Bar, Botersloot 44a
Good for: coffee, cake, terrace
Simply the best coffee in town. The cakes, and funky toasted sandwiches are good too. For lunch here I eat the Urban Special (toasted Moroccan flatbread filled with schwarzwelder ham, mature cheese, pickled vegetables, red capiscum and lettuce). Unfortunately, that always fills me up too much for cake, so a separate visit is required for the excellent chocolate cake. Best of all is still the coffee - the excellent 'flat white', which is still the best cup of coffee in Rotterdam.
The terrace out the back on Nieuwemarkt is blissfully quiet and traffic-free, making it one of the better terraces in Rotterdam. This is just as well because Urban Espresso Bar is generally too popular for its small amount of interior seating. Fortunately, there is a plan to open a second location on Nieuwe Binnenweg in September 2009
Peculiarity: bright and minimalist New World decor, which is unusual in Holland.
Last visit: 21 March 2009
Vivu, Witte De Withstraat 94-A, tel. 2140440‎‎
Recommendation: go for dinner with a date, but not at the weekend.
Vivu is an interesting variation on Rotterdam's collection of modern Asian noodle bars, being more chic than Dim Daily, the benchmark for this kind of thing. Vivu has a small selection of Vietnamese dishes, centred around large bowls of noodle soup. The food is good, and the fresh raw vegetables and herbs that come on the side for you get to add to your bowl are an especially nice touch. The food is certainly better than at competing Vietnamese restaurant Little V, for example.
Vivu has a warm stylish atmosphere that avoids some places' bright lights; this, and the decent house wine, make it a very different experience to other places with a similar menu. This, and its small size, makes it a good restaurant for a date.
Unfortunately, our first visits featured the occasional problem, which we hope are just down to teething troubles. First, they seemed to be confused about what 'vegetarian' means: after getting the order wrong and bringing the noodle soup with a lump of meat in it, they 'corrected' the problem by simply removing the meat, leaving meat-flavoured soup. Second, different people received dishes fifteen minutes apart and service was absent, despite the restaurant not being on the other hand. On the other hand, our next visit on a quiet weekday evening and without vegetarians was perfect, both food and service.
Overall, Vivu is good, but needs to make sure that it can perform consistently.
Weimar, Haringvliet 637, tel. 4148835
Recommendation: enjoy the terrace in the summer, and take your grandparents for lunch in the winter.
Weimar1890 is an eetcafe that recently replaced its cosy traditional pub-style interior for a smarter and more modern design. This is probably an improvement as far as style goes, but on our last visit we sat outside on the terrace, where Weimar scores best. Weimar has the best terrace in town, with more space and sun than any other in the Oude Haven.
What is more the food is well above average for an eetcafe. On a recent visit, we both thoroughly enjoyed the fish club sandwich (€8.50), with three tasty layers between four slices of lightly toasted bread. They also have a good selection of beers on tap, most notably Korenwolf, which is our favourite Dutch white beer and a solid hit outside in the summer. Unfortunately, our last visit was somewhat spoiled by poor service: ordering a coffee, not getting it, reminding someone and finally getting it after twenty minutes involved four different people, none of whom uttered anything approaching an apology.
Last visit: 30 August 2008
Wester Paviljoen, Nieuwe Binnenweg 136, tel. 4362645
Good for: drinks, lunch
Wester Paviljoen is Rotterdam's best answer to the grand café genre - one of the few big busy places that actually has a good atmosphere. It also scores with interesting guest beers on tap and a great terrace in the summer. The food is worth a look - perhaps not the best food in town or the best value, but good stuff and an interesting menu all the same. The lunch menu is best, and the daily specials are always worth a look, especially the vegetarian option.
The most distinctive thing about the atmosphere on our last evening visit was a rich blend of conversations that rose above the music. This is the right way around, as opposed to music that prevents conversation, but perhaps this only works in a place this big and busy, or in a smaller place that wants to be intimate.
In the summer, Westerpaviljoen's terrace fills up with the 30+ crowd who want to be seen.
Unfortunately, it is almost as difficult to get served as at Dudok, so you need to be either patient or assertive. Fortunately, when you want to pay it is fairly easy to obstruct the centrally-placed tills until the staff relent, and take your money. If that does not work, you might as well just leave.
Last visit: 3 April 2009.
White Elephant, West-Kruiskade 73-B, tel. 4111884‎
Recommendation: go and eat somewhere better-organised.
White Elephant has the potential to be a Moroccan version of Nazar, with its lively atmosphere, funky decor and the varied and interesting menu. Unfortunately, when we went to try it out, the staff simply failed to deliver.
The menu looks great, with a wide variety of tapas, starters and main courses that include tagines and cous-cous. There are also lots of vegetarian options.
Unfortunately, the kitchen was not very efficient - the eight of us waited over an hour for our food, even though there was no-one else eating in the restaurant. When it finally came, some of the flavours were great, but not all of the dishes had been 'prepared' properly - some had not been put in the microwave for long enough, and had uneven temperature or went cold. The only things worse than that were the fact that after managing to break a wine glass the waiter left broken glass on the table for the rest of the meal, and that one of the dishes had a long black hair on it.
Needless to say, we were keen to leave as soon as possible after we had eaten. Annoyingly, the bill just featured one entry for all of the food, which is lazy and did not inspire confidence that it was actually correct.
Last visit: 30 May 2008