Best Amsterdam Brunch List Updated

Our Best Amsterdam Brunch List has been immensely popular and also due for an update.

When we started the list in 2012, good brunches were much harder to find, and we were thankful for Lovefood to open doors, first as a pop-up and later as a daily brunch. Well, Lovefood has come and gone, but today there are quite a few good brunch options.

We are delighted to have added Kiwi-run Bakers & Roasters as well as Aussies Little Collins to our list. With Dutch brunch and lunch favorites Gartine and Brits Greenwood’s still going strong – both original list members – the list is just as international as Amsterdam itself.

dutchgrub best amsterdam brunch

Craving for many varieties of eggs and great coffee? Check out our Best Amsterdam Brunch List and head over to one of our favorites!

Farewell Witte Uyl and Lovefood

We’re very sad to see two of our favorite restaurants in Amsterdam close down. Both De Witte Uyl and Lovefood closed doors over the last weeks.

De Witte Uyl had been on our list of Best Amsterdam Restaurants since 2009. And Lovefood was one of our Best Amsterdam Brunch places for the last three years. Our lists change rarely – it takes several extraordinary dinners before a restaurant is included. And the restaurants on the lists have shown amazing consistency in their quality. That makes it even harder to see two of them go.

We’re incredibly thankful for all the hard work and uncompromising passion for good food that owners Annemieke and Jason and their teams have put into their restaurants. They set themselves high standards and weren’t satisfied unless those were met day in and day out.

And true to themselves, both owners decided to close shop at the top of their game. With their dining rooms still filled with happy guests every night, even in times of economic crisis, Annemieke and Jason decided that it was time to move on, leave troubles with landlords, diners who don’t get the concept of inventive desserts like the chocolate board, or large numbers of no shows behind, and start new exciting projects.

Annemieke has actually already moved to France and opened three fantastic apartments for rent, naturally each with a big, fully equipped kitchen. And Jason is working on a new idea to be revealed in 2014.

Thank you very much, Annemieke and Jason, good luck with your new projects and please keep us posted!

Dutchgrub in the New York Times

We love getting emails and comments from our readers with questions and suggestions and we do get quite a few. Nonetheless the one we received a while back immediately made our hearts beat faster. It came from a reporter at the New York Times.

He and his partner had found Dutchgrub while scoping out restaurants for an upcoming trip to Amsterdam. And liked our recommendations enough to get in touch and suggest lunch together. We had a great time at Gartine, one of our Best Amsterdam Brunch Places, talking about how Dutchgrub started, lunches of sliced bread and slices of cheese from Albert Heijn, our thoughts on the improving Amsterdam restaurant scene and much more. In the end we persuaded them to go to Wilde Zwijnen, a recent addition to our Best Amsterdam Restaurants list.

It was great fun, but best of all this all turned into a brilliant article well worth reading: Returning Zing to Dutch Cooking.

New York Times Article About Dutchgrub

Amsterdam Restaurants on Christmas

Traditionally, many Amsterdam restaurants have closed over the Christmas days, New Year’s Eve and New Years. And many still do, although more and more people are looking to go out on those occasions.

Since we get many requests for suggestions, we have done a little research and found some nice options for Christmas. New Year’s is a bit harder. We are still looking into it and will post suggestions if we can find any good ones.

So without further ado, here are some great options for dining out in Amsterdam on Christmas:

  1. Restaurant Worst, Marius’ little brother, is organising a lunch cum movie showing on December 24th. The idea is a communal table, starting at 12:45 with snacks and culminating in a main of wild boar served buffet style. After the lunch the food movie “Babette’s Feast” will be shown. Cost is between € 30,= and € 50,= depending on whether you stay for the movie and prefer to dine at Marius or Worst. See deworst.nl/verhalen for details.
  2. Très French Bistrot Neuf, one of the few restaurants in Amsterdam open 7 days a week, is open on December 24th, 25th and 26th also, and serving a menu op various Christmas favourites including Partridge with champagne sauerkraut, Beef Wellington, whole lobster and many others. See bistrotneuf.nl/documents/Kerstmenu2012.pdf for the full menu.
  3. And finally, very popular pop-up lunch turned soul food restaurant lovefood will be open on Christmas Day, December 25th, from 14:00 to 17:00 and serve a roast organic turkey. Details are on their Facebook page.

Happy holidays and make sure you make a reservation for any of these as soon as possible!

The Lovefood Brunch Juggernaut

What started out of love for sausage and traditional brunch dishes, mixed with a complete lack thereof in Amsterdam, has turned into one of the hottest food tickets in town. Reservations for the monthly Lovefood brunches now sell out in minutes. And there is a buzz of excitement amongst the lucky few while they wait outside for their table on the day of the event.

Creative brain and part-time chef Jason Hartley started Lovefood in 2009. Then held at Café Finch and later at Café Bax, the first brunches drew a crowd of expats and their friends, looking to trade Dutch pancakes and hagelslag for sausage and beans for one lazy Sunday morning. Over here at dutchgrub we loved the idea immediately and quickly included Lovefood on our list of best Amsterdam brunches.

A lot has happened since and we were delighted when Jason reached out to invite us over for brunch so that we could try out the new and improved Lovefood and share our thoughts on the dutchgrub blog.

And Lovefood has come a long way. The monthly brunches now take place at Brasserie Vlaming, a larger space with open kitchen on Prinsengracht. There is a professional website and very active Facebook page. The menu has a lot more options. And most importantly the cooking and waiting staff have improved a lot, running a smooth operation while cranking out some 130 brunches in 3 staggered shifts.

The menu has all the brunch classics: pancakes, eggs of all shapes and sizes, French toast, burritos and two full breakfasts called “The Beast” and “The Full Mikey”. Just like two years ago, we loved our Beast, which hit the spot with sausage, beans, pudding and tomato. The self-proclaimed “most American of the table” was happy to report the same about the Full Mikey with bacon, pancakes, scrambled eggs and hash browns. It’s obvious that Jason loves food and puts incredible effort into finding the best ingredients needed to turn these simple, timeless dishes into everybody’s favorite meal!

Jason has big plans and wants to expand Lovefood in multiple directions, possibly including selling artisanal food products and extending the brunches to a daily format. It will be great to see where Lovefood is headed and we would love to see it open every day of the month. We hope that when expanding, Lovefood will stay true to its roots. My beast started showing a few signs of turning into a beauty, of which there already are too many in Amsterdam…

For now, keep an eye on the website or Facebook page for the next Lovefood date. And make sure you get your reservation early as tables will go within minutes.

www.jasonslovefood.com
Currently taking place at Brasserie Vlaming, Prinsengracht 193 1015 DS Amsterdam
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Jason.Hartleys.lovefood
Twitter: www.twitter.com/#!/lovefood_jason
Public Transport: Trams 1, 2, 5, 13, or 17 to Nieuwezijds Kolk, or trams 3 or 10 to Marnixplein
Cuisine: Brunch
Neighbourhood: Canals
Vibe: Trendy
Price: €25 per person

Amsterdam Restaurant News

Two of our favorite places that were closed temporarily are now back and another one unfortunately has closed down. So I thought I’d write a brief post to update you on the latest development.

restaurant marius amsterdamFirst of all, Restaurant Marius, one of our Best Amsterdam Restaurants, has reopened in its former location. Marius was closed from late May to late September. Plans for moving to a larger venue fell through due to issues with permits, so Marius will continue to do its magic from the charming Barentszstraat locale.

lovefood amsterdam logoIn other good news, Lovefood, one of our Best Amsterdam Brunches, has returned. They are now operating on a monthly schedule, every first Sunday of the month. You can get the details on their Facebook page. Make sure you do get a reservation. It’s very busy due to the monthly schedule and several good reviews.

You win some, you lose some, they say. And unfortunately this appears to be true as we just received an email letting us know that The Man Who Cuts the Meat has closed down. Executive chef Chris van der Kuil has moved to Saigon, Vietnam, and is now working on Flow.