Bluespoon

Set within the Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht hotel on the Prinsengracht canal, Bluespoon occupied a design-led dining room conceived by Marcel Wanders, the Dutch designer whose work defines much of the hotel's interior. The space sat tucked behind the hotel reception, with an open kitchen and canal-facing outlook that grounded the room in its Amsterdam setting without leaning on it as a crutch. The kitchen worked a modern European register with a consistent Dutch inflection: local and seasonal produce shaped the menu, and dishes such as mackerel salad, cod with mushroom and chorizo, and crispy polenta with truffle reflected a kitchen comfortable moving between comfort and precision. A dark chocolate mousse served as the recurring dessert reference point. The restaurant also ran a Video Art dinner menu, with courses drawing conceptual cues from the hotel's art collection — a programming choice that aligned with the Andaz brand's design-forward positioning rather than feeling like a gimmick. The culinary team included chefs with pedigree drawn from Amsterdam's upper tier: Kasper Stiekema had worked at Ciel Bleu, La Rive, and De Kas before his time here, and Sander Bierenbroodspot brought experience from Ciel Bleu and Vrienden van Jakob. That lineage placed Bluespoon in credible company within the city's hotel dining scene, where the gap between ambitious and merely expensive can be wide. A three-course lunch menu was available at €49, positioning the restaurant as accessible at midday relative to its dinner ambitions. The venue received a nomination for Best Cocktail Bar at the 2018 Dutch Food Bloggers Awards, and a Forbes feature highlighted its approach to combining fine art with serious cooking. The Jordaan canal belt is not short of hotel restaurants competing for the same well-travelled guest, but Bluespoon's combination of Wanders' interior, a kitchen with documented fine-dining credentials, and a menu genuinely rooted in Dutch produce gave it a coherent identity rather than the generic European comfort food that fills too many hotel dining rooms in this price bracket.

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