Restaurant Spring

Restaurant Spring, named after the season, lives up to its moniker with light dishes, a young team and a fresh, uncluttered interior.

Black dominates the floor, chairs and sofas of this restaurant in Amsterdam’s moneyed Oud Zuid. The black is offset by white linen on two neat rows of tables stretching the length of the narrow room, like road markings on tarmac pointing the way to the open kitchen.

Restaurant Spring’s serves international fare with distinct Asian influences. Our amuse was a spring roll (a tongue-in-cheek reference to the restaurant's name, the waitress told us), filled with shredded carrots. This was presented standing up in a Chinese cup with a layer of mayonnaise at the bottom of it for dipping. The filling was under-seasoned and the spring roll would have benefited from a punchier sauce, like sweet chilli.

The starter - a ceviche of mackerel on avocado cream with two crispy mini prawn pakoras - was an interesting combination of textures, but like the amuse there were too many background flavours and nothing to startle our taste buds.

Fish dominates Restaurant Spring’s menu, which fits its light approach. The main course was sea bass simply pan fried, on a bed of fennel, carrots and garden peas. Giving the dish a smidgen of body were two balls of pommes dauphine.

Image of Restaurant Spring Amsterdam The dessert of parfait, from the French word for perfect, was indeed almost faultless. Accompanied by a trio of meringue straws balanced over it like a tepee, a rich fig sauce and a still-warm madeleine, the parfait burst off the plate with all the flavour that had been missing in the previous courses.

Some diners have complained of noise from the restaurant’s open kitchen. We weren't bothered by this at all, but rather by our neighbours, whose table was almost connected to ours. We couldn't help but overhear them talking about their high-flying expat jobs and upcoming nuptials. Any closer and we probably would have been invited.

Restaurant Spring was slow to start and really only got going at the main course. Perhaps this was all a kitchen conspiracy to send diners off on a gastronomic high, but we could have done without the warm-up dishes.

We visited during Restaurant Week, which can be something of a hit and miss affair. Although the cost of a three-course meal recently went up from €25 to €27.50, this was one of the best cut-price dinners I’ve had.