Stadscafé

The Roest and De Willem crew's grand café at Westergas: crêpes at breakfast, rotisserie chicken at dinner, 120 wines by night.

The De Kopgroep trio behind Roest and De Willem (Maarten de Vries, Jamie van der Will, chef Jef van den Hout) joined forces with Teds owner Michiel Huisman, took over the old Bar Kantoor at the Conscious Hotel on Westergas, and on 1 July reopened it as the grand café Amsterdam West didn't know it was missing. The reference points are De Jaren and De IJsbreker: a place you can enter at 07:00 for fried eggs and leave at 01:00 after the last of 120 wines, with a rotisserie spinning chicken and whole cauliflower in between and a crêpe station working the sweet shift. Antwerp's Gestalt Architects dressed the room in art, curiosities and open shelving, more Hoxton lobby than the founders' industrial older siblings, with a reading table for the solo crowd and a double-sided flirtbar for everyone else. Inside seats about 100; the terrace unrolls 250 more into the park. The kitchen makes nearly everything itself, sauces to pastries, and the range is genuinely democratic: a garnalenkroket on brioche for 9 euros at lunch, a 600-gram T-bone for 95 at dinner. Weeks old, already behaving like it has been there for years.

Walk-ins rule; only big groups need to email ahead. Come before 10:00 for crêpes and a quiet park, or take the flirtbar solo with one of the twelve wines by the glass, from 5 euros.

Photo: Stadscafé

Photo: Stadscafé