Italian restaurant Demetra in Amsterdam serves amazing pizzas, pasta and risotto

Italian restaurant Demetra recently opened in the heart of Amsterdam’s city centre. Here, amid all the hustle and bustle of Het Rembrandtplein, you can enjoy excellent Italian classics. From Neapolitan pizzas to the most delicious risotto. 

You could easily walk straight past it, if you come here voluntarily at all. Demetra is tucked into a little recess, more or less right on the hysterically busy  Rembrandtplein, around the corner from party café Jantjes verjaardag and with café Bolle Jan and café Keetje Tippel across the street. Demetra is therefore a very welcome change from all the neon and fast food in the area.

Genuinely Italian

Demetra, its name referring to the goddess of grain, was founded by Italians Serena Romano, Aldo De Dominicis Rotondi and chef Andrea Impiccini. All three have backgrounds in the hospitality industry. When Andrea heard that his former employers were closing down on Reguliersdwarsstraat, he immediately called his entrepreneur friends Serena and Aldo. Together, they have now opened restaurant Demetra, where they want to create the atmosphere of an Italian cucina. With, of course, Italian ingredients. In front of the restaurant, there is a pizza on a table that looks so delicious you won’t hesitate to go inside.

Demetra’s interior

There is room for around forty guests. Honestly, cosiness isn’t Demetra’s strong point. The interior is casual and the atmosphere has the same kind of lack of warmth that, for example, Surinamese warungs can also have. This is partly due to the lighting and plastic chairs, and partly to the music, which sounds most like a construction worker’s radio at seven o’clock in the morning. Eros Ramazzotti is alternated with Italian fairground music, and it is genuinely too loud. Next to our table is a green moss wall depicting the restaurant’s namesake.

Cosy or not, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. How often have we not been blown away in Italy by sensational dishes in an atrocious interior? Exactly!

On the menu

The menu is concise, but everything sounds equally delicious. Everything here is homemade, using the best ingredients. Such as burrata with roasted vegetables and spicy honey, and carpaccio of bresaola, generously topped with Parmesan, rocket and truffle. The bruschetta, four pieces of wonderfully crisp bread, is also generously topped with stracciatella and tomato. Among the primi are tagliolini made with roasted wheat and a spicy tomato sauce, and gnocchi with yellow tomato sauce, stracciatella and crispy guanciale (pork cheeks).

Stracotto

Pasta lovers can really indulge here because the pasta dishes are exceptionally good. They are prepared according to traditional techniques with durum wheat semolina from Molino Mininni in Bari. Such as the stracotto: pappardelle with slowly cooked beef ragù, pieces of taralli (the ring-shaped Italian snack) and melted Provolone. No wonder that pappardelle is derived from pappare, meaning to gobble…

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Perfect pizzas

The pizzas are baked in an impressive Molteni wood-fired oven using fresh dough. Chef Andrea lets the dough ferment twice, making the pizza easier to digest and even fuller in flavour. Alongside classics such as Margherita and salami, Andrea also serves pizzas with, for example, buffalo mozzarella, Italian sausage, mushrooms and caramelised onions, or with San Marzano tomatoes, roasted aubergine, smoked Provola di agerola, black pepper and fresh basil. And they are genuinely unbelievably delicious! Cutlery is not provided, incidentally—just a pair of scissors.

Risotto made with Acquerello rice

The risotto is also an absolute must-try. Risotto is a simple dish with few ingredients, which is why it is important that all the ingredients are of the highest quality. That is the case here, and you can taste it! The risotto is made with Acquerello rice. It also contains various types of mushrooms and fresh truffle, topped with a crisp made from crunchy pieces of Parmesan and aged balsamic vinegar, which is deliciously sweet and syrupy. Truly heartwarming.

Top tiramisú 

The tiramisú is top-notch too. Made in the classic way, with no bells and whistles (fortunately; for us, a sign that you shouldn’t order tiramisú…) and exactly how you hope it will taste. Fresh, creamy, delicious. Definitely order a Passito di Pantelleria with it, a lightly sweet dessert wine from the Italian island of Pantelleria.

Demetra opening hours

Demetra is open seven days a week for dinner. At the weekend, you can also go there for an Italian lunch.

Demetra, Korte Reguliersdwarsstraat 8, Amsterdam

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