de Silveren Spiegel, Amsterdam

http://www.desilverenspiegel.com/

One night in Amsterdam we had a team dinner at de Silveren Spiegel, the self-proclaimed "most famous Dutch restaurant since 1614". We were seated in the private dining hall upstairs and had a pre-fixed menu.

Before dinner, our waiter gave us an overview of the history of the restaurant, including rationale for the architecture and the sloping of the building. The restaurant has a very rich history - it was a popular haunt for German soldiers during the war, but also hid several Jews. There are not many glass windows in the building, because the more glass windows you had, the higher the tariff. Owners typically built houses with deep interiors. The floor upstairs sloped to the left - this was more due to age than anything else. The front of the building slanted forward, it was intentionally constructed this way to enable packages to be lifted up to the upper rooms without destroying the front of the house. You can click on the link above for more details.

We then proceeded to enjoy a wonderful meal, which included warm fish-based pureed soup served in a glass cup with sealed cover (you could use a small spoon to eat or drink directly from the glass), cold cucumber based broth(?) with shrimp, veal and potatoes, fish and potatoes, profiteroles with raspberry sauce and red wine.

All in all the dinner took about 4 hours. Kudos to the team for making it a fun night even though almost everyone had arrived on overnight flights from the US that morning.