Rijsel

Rotisserie chicken and Flemish classics in a gloriously noisy former home-economics school.

Rijsel is the Dutch name for Lille, and the kitchen looks that way too: north-French and Flemish cooking done with the confidence of people who see no reason to reinvent anything. The room, a former domestic-science school canteen off the Weesperzijde, still has the strip-lit, scrubbed-wood look of a classroom, which somehow makes the whole thing better, this is a restaurant about what's on the plate and who's at your table. The rotisserie birds are the calling card, burnished and dripping over frites, but the tartare, the côte de boeuf and whatever's on the short-changing menu deserve equal attention, along with a properly French wine list. Booking is a blood sport: reservations for each month open on the first of the previous one, and locals set alarms. That should tell you enough.

The spit-roasted chicken with frites, order it even if you came intending not to.

Photo: Rijsel / Janus van den Eijnden

Photo: Rijsel / Janus van den Eijnden