Roest

The De Kopgroep team's second act for the old techno palace: a waterside hall, family-style plates, a serious Asian streak.

Fifteen years after Roest's rave-and-raw-warehouse era, the same waterside hall at Jacob Bontiusplaats reopened in March 2025 under De Kopgroep, the five behind De Willem, Kopstootbar and Jajem: Maarten de Vries, Jamie van der Will, Sunny Bakhtiar, Ischa van Bemmelen and chef Jef van den Hout, who runs both this kitchen and De Willem's. The old industrial bones, steel, concrete, 200 seats across six areas, are intact, but the menu reads like De Willem's cousin: kimchi cheese croquettes with gochujang dip, skate wing in tom yum bisque with barbecued pak choi, a 600 gram cote de boeuf for the table. It is officially French and Mediterranean, served family style, but the kitchen keeps reaching east for miso, shiitake XO and chili crisp, and nobody is pretending otherwise. By day it is a long-table room looking at the water; by night the six spaces, wine room, studio, platform, main hall, turn into the kind of loud, communal dinner Oostenburg's new apartment blocks were missing. The terrace alone, right on the water, is worth the trip before the kitchen even opens.

Open daily from 12:00 until late. Book the terrace tables on the water for summer; groups over 25 need to email ahead.

Photo: Roest, via Entree Magazine