With three Michelin stars, De Librije is probably one of the Netherland’s best-known restaurants. For the past five years, the owners have had an advising role in Librije’s Zusje, which is the Librije’s sibling in the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam. This advising role will end on 1 January, when Lirbije’s Zusje will be renamed to Spectrum. Because of its association with De Librije, we have been wanting to visit this restaurant in Amsterdam for some time now. Earlier this month, the time of visiting was there…

The restaurant is located in a beautiful and stylish hotel, the Waldorf Astoria. Upon entering the hotel, we are greeted by three members of staff. One took our coats while one of the others escorted us to the restaurant and our table. What we noticed was that they seemed to have memorized the guest list for the evening, as we gave our name and they knew it was a party of two. The restaurant seats approx. 40-45 people and is located in what feels like a basement but is really the ground floor as it is adjacent to the garden. Looking at the interior it really is a classy restaurant as everything is in top condition. We have found not a single thing where we feel the staff could have paid more attention (i.e. fix damage or something).  The staff was wearing stylish suits and we notice both male and female staff was wearing the same ‘uniform’. Where we were expecting the staff to be a little arrogant or distant/formal, which was based on nothing, we were completely wrong. The atmosphere was casual and the staff was friendly, with jokes from time to time if and where appropriate. One thing that did surprise me was that not all the staff speaks Dutch, which was a little bit disappointing. Not really a problem as we do speak English, but in Holland we kind of expect the staff to speak the language of the country they are in.

The menu has a maximum of 7 courses, so seven courses it was. We intend to not describe all the courses below and we will try to stick to our favourites. A glass of champagne and three amuses preceded the meal. All raised the bar for the rest of the evening. With Holland being the country of the raw herring, this was part of the first course. It came with “caviar” of herring and this as well as the herring itself was presented on stems of crunchy potato covered in powdered chives. This brought some nice onion-like flavours without the sharpness of a real onion that is traditionally eaten with raw herring in Holland. As a sauce or dressing, the bottom of the plate was lined with buttermilk for some acidity. The powdered potato stems were small shoe pastry-like balls that were somehow glued together. It requires some skill to get this done and have all the plates look alike, but the chefs manage to do this time after time.

One of the next courses was another unusual marriage of flavours. In a previous post (about HKK in London) you may have read that we had beef with a strawberry sauce. At Librije’s Zusje it was red mullet that they combined with a strawberry sauce. Normally served with clams and other shellfish, for me this was replaced with some vegetables. What we initially did not notice that there was a second sauce on the plate: Coconut hollandaise sauce. The bright an fragrant orange sauce was deliciously unusual with the fish and got even better when combined with the coconut sauce. The waiter gave us a fork, knife and spoon, but the fish was so beautifully cooked and soft that the knife remained unused.

After one more fish dish, it was time for the main/meat course: Crispy duck it said on the menu. And crispy it was: Three half circle slices of juicy pink duck with a crispy skin. When putting the fork in the skin, you could hear it break as you would also get with pork crackling. For sauce, there was a duck gravy with pomegranate and for veggies there were some tulip bulbs and celeriac. We have to be honest here and say that the duck and rich sauce were so good that the rest of the dish (mainly the vegetables) was a bit overpowered. The vegetables were nice, but here too we will be honest and say that the tulip bulbs might as well have been potatoes. This does not mean they were not good, but there was so much flavour in the duck (and gravy) that the vegetables were easily “forgotten” by us as we kept going back to the duck very quickly. While eating this dish, the waiter stopped by our table to pour some green substance over something that looked like a decorative flower. To find out why that was done we had to wait for a next course.

Not long after, we found out that the “decorative flower” was in fact a fungus: Tremella. The green liquid turned out to be tarragon oil that was intended to flavour the mushroom. This mushroom, which by now was turned bright green, was served on top of some bbq-ed white chocolate ice cream with some pink peppercorns in it. The ice cream was perfectly smooth, is a little sweet with a bit of a kick from the peppercorns.  Simply delicious. Having some mushroom on top of the ice cream brought some unusual texture to the dish, which may not be my favourite, but somehow we do think this choice is a good/interesting one.

With more white chocolate (but now combined with delicious and fragrant white truffle) for dessert, the meal was ended and we closed off the evening with tea and chocolates. These chocolates were colour-coded and the flavours matched (some of) the flavours of dishes we ate earlier in the evening. There was a “menu” delivered with the chocolates to bring home as well as identify which chocolate has what flavour. Where we really liked the concept, for us it was a little too much, but luckily there was the chance to bring the chocolates home (so we did).

Going to dinner at Librije’s Zusje really is an amazing experience. It is more than just dinner, it really is an evening of pampering. As mentioned before, the staff is really making an effort to make you feel comfortable and the food is simply amazing. The only downside is that this comes at a cost. For the meal alone, we spent EUR 158 per person (excl. tip and drinks) but to our opinion it really is worth every penny.

Restaurant location: View on Google Maps
Restaurant website: http://www.librijeszusje.com