Why anyone would go to eat here voluntarily is bey...

Why anyone would go to eat here voluntarily is beyond me.

I have never had a high opinion of Van der Valk and I never will. It's a buffed-up McDonalds and nothing more.

What's so bad about it? Well, don't get me started. The restaurant hall is large and very noisy. The Live Cooking is everything but Live. In fact, it's extremely dead. Leaving a couple of steaks to simmer in a pan, under a heat lamp, is a crime against humanity. The hall were we were seated (family thing) was way to small, uninspiring and smelled of methylated spirits - for keeping the food warm in those awful aluminium serving trays. The food itself - well, we'll get to that.

First off, the waiter (one of two) DID NOT KNOW WHAT BEER THEY SERVE. "What would you like to drink, sir? / I don't know, what do you serve? / Well, sir, we have house lager... / What brand? / Eh, I'm not certain... / Any bottled beers? / Oh, I don't know, sir, let me see. And then the boy brings me some lager I didn't really want. Secondly, a booking was made nor a certain amount of people and we were short two chairs. So we had to bunch up to make room. Thirdly, like I said, methylated spirit smell.

The food. Oh, the food. For starters, some mushy fish salads, a tray of carpaccio and a single basket of bread were provided for a group of more than 25 adults. A lot of the salads were left alone, though. My son, for example, loves shrimp. He can thoroughly enjoy the /poivron crevette/ I sometimes make, or he likes them in sushi. He did not touch these shrimp, though. "They're like yucky pieces of salty chewing gum"! Bless him, the boy is seven years old and he already understands...

Main couse, then. Poached fish with cheese sauce, potatoes, overcooked broccoli. A Roulade of beef, pretending to be steaks, drowned in artificial, flavour enhanced mushroom or pepper sauce. Fried rice, undercooked, the freeze dried spice blend clearly coming from a bag. Chicken Satay (chicken leg, so some tendons were involved) and peanut sauce from a jar that was so salt and chemical I scraped it off.
WARNING: the next day, my kids had a rash, plus both my wife and I had headaches. We tend to eat very little chemicals at home, we're just not used to trash like this. And yes, this is our typical reaction to processed foods.

The deserts were, well, all right. Yes, they were bought at some factory, wholesale. But there is only so much you can do wrong with store-bought stuff.

I'm certain that people who think McDonalds is "just great" will consider this a fine night out with great food. But I honestly can't. Not that I think expensive restaurants are better, no I don't. They /might/ be, but that's not a given. No, I know a lot of cheaper places that serve great food, well cooked and properly served. Please, do yourself a favour and go somewhere else.

TL;DR: If you go here, don't expect much. Better: go someplace else.