Restaurant Bureau » Amsterdam's Hidden Rooftop

07 Sep Restaurant Bureau » Amsterdam’s Hidden Rooftop

Posted at 10:34h in Amsterdam Guide, Tasty Hotspots by Wander-lust 0 Comments

This could well be one of Amsterdam’s best kept secrets. Restaurant Bureau is a rooftop restaurant in Amsterdam West with a story of its own. Bureau Amsterdam is part of B-Amsterdam.

The building was originally build for the IBM headquarters but when they departed it was empty for 12 years until it finally became a new opportunity for start-up businesses. You can book a work spot for as little as 75 euro’s per month or if you’re beginning a new venture you can rent office space and share the building with tons of creative people. You can find restaurant Bureau in a secluded area where you will find businesses, hospitals and other industrial buildings. But this place is definitely worth the extra bicycle ride.

We serve people, not titles. The entrance of Bureau

The Rooftop

This one is different than any rooftop you will come across. The rooftop garden was designed and built by Rooftop Doctors and GrownDownTown and you can compare it to a fun park with lot’s of green. There are old car wrecks, a small beach area and a pont with fish. You want a fresh mint tea? You can pick it yourself from the herb garden! Wanna play some Jeu de Boules? No problem. 75 procent that grows here, you can eat. Herbs and plants are maintained by recycled rainwater that falls on the roof. They even have a strawberry hill with several types of strawberries and a hen of chickens that provide the restaurant with some daily fresh eggs.

The Restaurant

Bureau only opened a few weeks ago and you can feel the buzz, even if they intentionally didn’t want to promote it. “We want our customers by word of mouth and let them experience it for themselves.”- Explains manager Laurens. I was dying to see it so I walked in last Friday to see it with my own eyes. The interior is spacious, yet cozy with a bar molded out of the steel plates that once lay on the roof. The lights are all individually made and you can pull a cord in order to change their height. If you look closely, you can see that they are made out of porcelain plates! Chef Niels Veenvliet (you may know him from restaurant Choux), works with a new menu every 2 months so people come back to taste different flavors. If you love wine you might like the fact that they serve Vinos Naturales at restaurant Bureau. This basically means nothing weird is added and you drink the wine in it’s purest vorm. This may taste a bit different than you’re used to but I loved it!

Something unique, the lights at restaurant Bureau

When the sun is out, you have plenty of choice

When you have dinner, you will receive a small amuse and you can bet on it that they’ve used something from the garden. I ordered the fish soup with langoustine as a starter and the vegetarian risotto as a main course. Both very tasty in their own right plus the bread they serve at restaurant Bureau is to die for. When you’re a dessert kind of person, make sure you order a coffee because it’s roasted by a Dutch label named Moyee coffee. They focus on Fairtrade so the farmers in the country of origin (Ethiopia) get their fair share.

Tasty and healthy!