Test Sleeping: Celia Amsterdam / Kimpton De Witt
Hotel restaurants, once the neglected child of the hospitality industry, have suddenly become the only places where we can still eat out. And completely safely, too! The only downside is an advantage: you have to stay overnight. So in the coming weeks, we’ll be test sleeping in hotels. In search of the best restaurant hotel, but also to give the hospitality industry a helping hand. Today: Restaurant Celia and Kimpton De Witt in Amsterdam.
I want to stay here
No Happy Hour, but Social Hour
The white bed with its large pillows beckons, but it’s almost five o’clock and that’s when wine hour begins, so I quickly head downstairs. ‘Social Hour,’ says the sign on the bar, next to the open bottles of wine, but I’m sitting alone at a table. Then the lights dim and the bar door swings open. ‘I’ll come and sit with you for a bit,’ says a photographer friend, and the hotel manager also joins us for a toast.
Suddenly music starts playing and the bar fills with other guests. ‘Did you hire extras especially for me?’ I ask the hotel manager. ‘We spared no expense,’ he laughs. The bartender tops up my half-empty glass. ‘I didn’t even need to ask,’ he laughs.
Delicious Californian dishes
The large restaurant is filled with yellow sofas, bar stools and table lamps that all glow like the Californian sun. Plates are set down across the table: calamari with padron peppers, cauliflower with yuzu and feta, broccoli with peanuts and chili. The vegetable dishes are fantastic in their flavorful simplicity. The steak with fennel kimchi, cavatelli (pasta) with crab, shrimp and mussel are also delicious, as is the Californian chardonnay. At 8:00 p.m., the glasses have to be emptied and we order a non-alcoholic beer.
Fluffy pillows
The bar is closed, but I remember the bottle of wine in the room. Upstairs. Outside it’s foggy—or is that in my head? Through the window, party lights glow in the trees. ‘The End of the World,’ it says on the building opposite. I sink into the fluffy pillows and wake up startled by the alarm clock hours later. Water from the black rain shower warms my body and I inhale the scent of the shower gel. Poivre Noir. Then I wrap myself in a gigantic towel and make coffee in a Delft-blue cup. Feeling at home in this room takes no effort. This hotel is a perfectly directed play, and love is palpable in every detail.
With hollandaise sauce
Go?
Celia, Nieuwendijk 60, Amsterdam
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