All posts tagged: Holland

Vinkeles

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(17.75 / 20)  An absolute gem of a restaurant housed in the beautiful Dylan hotel in the center of Amsterdam’s historic canal belt. Elegant, precise and deceptively simple classic French preparations are given a Dutch twist and sent out to the beautifully calm dining room where diners are taken care of by the current Gault&Millau Maitre D’ of the year. (They also have a Chefs Table which I can’t recommend enough). For me, Vinkeles is so far out in front of the pack of 1 star restaurants in town that I already assume it has 2 macarons –  an oversight I should hope is rectified by Michelin sooner rather than later. 

Vinkeles

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Keizersgracht 384 1016 GB Amsterdam Tel +31(0)20 530 2010 1 Michelin star since 2009 Gault&Millau 18 7th Visit:  2nd Dinner at the Chef’s Table : Saturday 4th March 2017 (17.5/20)  €€€€€ You can eat pretty well in my adopted town of Amsterdam… which is fortunate given eating is one of the few things I really excel at. Leaving your home to live somewhere new is never easy, and when food is as important to you as it is to me, leaving a city which has as world-class a food scene as London can be verging on terrifying. But I landed firmly on two feet here all those years ago; Amsterdam definitely knows how to eat well. I’ve actually been coming to The Dylan hotel for much longer than the 6 years I’ve been frequenting its flagship restaurant, given I often stayed here when I was in town on business travel. When we got married at the Museum van Loon a few blocks down the same canal, we spent our wedding night at The Dylan. So it’s …

Bolenius

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Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1 Michelin Star since 2017 2nd visit : 20th Jan 17 Good, pleasantly quirky food with strong Dutch influence and focus on local vegetables (16/20) Bolenius is a small but perfectly formed restaurant located in the financial district of Amsterdam south, where it is heaving with suits during the week, but practically gave us the place to ourselves when we visited for lunch on Saturday. My first visit was some years ago and, rather unsurprising, was for a business lunch. I initially recalled the meal fondly (if not terribly precisely given the quantity of wine), but had since then totally forgotten about the place. That was until December of course when it popped-up as one of Amsterdam’s 3 new Michelin-starred kitchens. I know the other two awardees well and must admit that I, much like some other local diners, was a bit surprised by the choices (but that’s a whole different story), so was very quite intrigued to come back. The dining room itself is full of light and pleasantly unfussy, sitting on painted concrete floors …

De Librije

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Zwolle, The Netherlands 3 Michelin stars since 2004 38 on World’s 50 Best Restaurants 3rd Visit: Lunch Saturday 14th Jan 2017 Restaurants rarely get better than this : 19.5/20 Monkfish, fermented peppers and aubergine It was with some considerable joy that we returned, almost exactly a year after our last visit, to the temple of modern Dutch gastronomy in Zwolle, Northern Holland. The restaurant is housed in an impressive 18th century pile, an old prison building, and cohabits the space with its own boutique hotel. Many guest who book for dinner take the option to roll happily up the stairs into the luxurious accommodation above, or indeed as we had done last year, make a whole glorious weekend of it, enjoying the heady heights of dinner, breakfast and lunch with 3 Michelin stars. This is truly a labour of love; The celebrated power-couple of Dutch fine dining, Jonnie and Thérèsa Boer, still work every day in the restaurant which they founded together some 20 years ago and which rightfully commands an almost mythical status in Dutch …