Catherine Mastebroek

Review of Grolsch Cine Cafe

After entering, we stood waiting by the bar, for t...

After entering, we stood waiting by the bar, for there were no employees in sight. After one did appear, she did her best to ignore us until we approached her. We had a reservation, and she told us to go sit down somewhere, so we did.

While we sat, none of the employees paid any attention to us, we were not asked if we wanted a drink or if we wanted something to eat. One of us went to the bar again and asked if we could order, but was just told to go sit back down. Eventually a waitress approached us and asked us whether we wanted to drink something, so we ordered and quickly asked for food too. She left us to get our drinks and brought them back after a bit, but still we got no menus. We had to call a different waiter to us to receive the menus.

Once we had our menus, we were again ignored by all waiters and had to call them over just to be served and be seen. It might just be an Amsterdam custom, but we felt very ignored. After finally getting another waiter over, they told us that the only vegetarian dish on their event menu wasn't in stock. We asked if there was a replacement and they went to ask. They did return eventually, but we could not order until we called over yet another waiter.

When the food eventually arrived, it was surprisingly good! Though the menu listed 'skin on' fries and we received regular ones, the rest was mostly in order. We had thenspareribs, which were great, the beef burger, also great, and the vegetarian goat's cheese salad, which our vegetarian companion did not appreciate as she didn't know what would be in it beforehand and when she received it, it was full of vegetables she does not like. After picking those out of it she barely had any food left, but we had luckily already ordered an extra side of fries for her.

Apart from the salad, the two other dishes had enough food in them and tasted good.

However, because of the waiters ignoring us persistently but serving other customers without them having to specifically call for a waiter, our experience wasn't great.

We understand that there was an event menu, but listing only 1 vegetarian dish (ravioli) and then not even having it in stock was not great... Dessert options were also limited to one dish, which wasn't even a dish many people would like (white chocolate mouse) as opposed to for example some scoops of vanilla icecream. We wound up getting our ice cream somewhere else after paying and leaving the establishment.