Restaurants

If you want to take your girlfriend out in style, a pretty good spot to go would be Bo Cinq: stylish interior, and, if you are a smoker – they have definitely the most beautiful smokers lounge in whole Amsterdam. If you are on a budget, they have a couple of good wines between € 20.00 and € 30.00 per bottle, but if you are in for something special, prices range up to something around € 400.00.

Bo Cinq is a restaurant, a bar and, this is why I pay a visit to it once in while, a beautiful and stylish lounge. Well dressed people, so don’t show up in your leisure suite, you wouldn’t feel comfortable. A good thing to do, especially if you haven’t reserved a table, get a bottle of wine, order some oysters at the bar and look for a good spot on one of the couches in the lounge.

The bar/lounge entrance is not quite prominent, so look for a small sign Bo5, that’s all it says. It’s nice and stylish inside: I only feel sorry for the large tree in the smokers lounge, suffering quite a miserable existence. An interior designers choice for refreshing the air probably – at the expense of his life…

A bit off the center, with a bit of Mediterranean touch, Hesp blinks out with one of the nicest terraces Amsterdam has to offer, right at the river Amstel. Strolling down the Weesperzijde along the water on a hot summer night, and then ending up there for one of the at least 40 brands of beer they have (half of them tapped), great.

The same is true, of course, for the afternoon, and I am especially fond of the live music events on Sunday afternoon (not always – check first, if that’s what you are looking for). It can be a fantastic way to swing out the weekend…

On Friday nights it is less crowded, but still a place to have good time. The bar tenders are doing their best to entertain, and you can tell they love their job.

But Hesp is not only a bar to have a good time on a Friday night, Hesp also accommodates a full restaurant with a variety of international dishes for a reasonable price.

Canvas (which resides at the seventh floor of the former Volkskrant building) is an easy going restaurant, club and cocktail bar with a little alternative attitude. You enter the building through the main hall, pass the guards, then on the left-hand side you’ll find the elevators to the seventh floor.

The interior is a little alternative, self-made, food is being served at foldable beer tables. There is graffiti and secondhand lampshades, and there are chesterfield benches to hang out before or after dinner. Food and service is better than the interior suggests.

DJ´s, singer-songwriters, theme/parties or cocktail nights (5 EUR a cocktail), you can have it all @ canvas. But whatever takes place at Canvas, nothing can beat the view: I think it’s one of the best Amsterdam has to offer. In the summer there are two terraces open, one is part of the restaurant, the other is a surfer style beach bar – they are unfortunately closed now, let’s wait for spring. The cocktail nights are hosted by Marcel Barlag, the cycling DJ. He comes with his bicycle fully equipped with his dj set and his records, playing 70′s sounds.

Next to exhibiting hip photography they also host events like a cloth exchange market: bring the cloths that you’ve had enough of, find someone who likes them, and trade them in for items that you like of his/her collection. Very nice idea!

Van De Buurt is a bit of a newcomer in west. The neighborhood has had a long history of not being taken care of, but the last years the winds of change have also been blowing through the streets of Bos en Lommer. One manifestation of these changes is café-restaurant Van de Buurt. The old inhabitants would think of vintage as a “not-being-able-to-afford-better”, but we love vintage because it has style. So we love to hang out in the afternoon on the old couches having a cup of tea right behind the large shop windows and watch people outside passing by along the Rijpgracht. During the day especially young mothers seem to have discovered this little corner for themselves and their toddlers.

But there is more. While the vintage corner covers only one half of Van de Buurt, the rest is a nice, and not even very small restaurant. You can have vegetarian food, Indian curry, and Spanish tortilla, all vegetarian, and with little creative touch. There is no menu though, only one meal a day, a three-course-menu, but for a reasonable price. The place is not over-run, so there is no need for a reservation. Still a pretty undiscovered gem in Bos en Lommer.

Right now – the days are extending and it’s getting sunnier every day, you might as well enjoy their terrace – at the moment there are only a few in the area, and here it’s just a relaxed, not too pretentious place to hang out…

Soup Enzo is one of those formulas that make you wonder why nobody came up with it earlier. It filled a gap for healthy ‘fast’ food, which had been missing from the Amsterdam food scene before. With all the health food freaks taking over the city now, they’re pioneers and all the more relaxed for it.

One of their stores is near Waterlooplein, with a few seats by the window that are excellent for spying on all the flamboyant theatre students and random funny folk passing by de Jodenbreestraat. They also have a take-away store on the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat 54, close to Leidseplein. They’re not a snack chain by any means, though – everything here’s home made. They make their gallons of soup fresh each day and which recipes they have on offer changes accordingly. The Moroccan chick pea soup and the ‘Gentse waterzooi’ (Belgian chicken soup) are my favorites, as is the sweet potato (like baby food…but better). The Hungarian goulash is great when it’s cold out, the gazpacho in summer. 

I find myself eating at Soup Enzo far too regularly when I’ve been studying or after work, when I don’t feel like cooking or really eating out. It’s the perfect cheap meal. After a medium soup and one of their enormous salads – for those who’d like some solids with their soup, the feta salad’s great - you feel surprisingly satisfied and guilt free.