Café Braque Wine Bar

Café Braque has joined the growing number of new ventures that have opened at the once-desolate Ruysdaelkade end of Albert Cuypstraat. The restaurant and wine bar is an inviting mix of Parisian joix de vivre and Dutch gezelligheid.

In Café Braque’s restaurant, diners sit down on red banquettes amid potted plants to a compact menu of French classics, including snails, bouillabaisse, entrecôte with frites and chocolate gâteau chaud.

In the adjoining bar area, where I settled in, around 15 wines are available by the glass. This is appropriate, given that the name of the Amsterdam restaurant and wine bar is both a reference to the French painter Georges Braque, one of the founders of Cubism, and a play on the Dutch word brak, which roughly translates as hung-over.

The relatively high number of wines is made possible by the fancy technology on the premises: the wines are stored in climate-controlled cabinets, which maintain bottles at a constant temperature and keep open bottles drinkable for longer.

Hopes high, I ordered a Spanish Tempranillo, the cheapest of the bunch, followed by a more expensive Hungarian Pinot Grigio. Instead of the ‘seductive’ and ‘frivolous’ wines with an ‘astonishingly’ good aroma promised on the wine list, I received wines which were so forgettable that I can't even summon another adjective to describe them.

At €3 and €4.50 per glass respectively, the prices were just low enough to swallow. It was the top-end wines that really caught in my throat. The Chianto Classico, which at €7.50 a glass should have been magnifico, lacked flavour, finish and finesse.

Café Braque has a great location in De Pijp and a laid-back, welcoming vibe. It’s a shame, then, that the much-touted wines can't compete with either of these, and are in many cases hugely overpriced given their disappointing quality.

The wine bar's name may hint at long nights of alcohol-fuelled revelry, but the only hangover I woke up with next day was financial.