Café-Restaurant Amsterdam

Housed in a century-old water-pumping station, this is dining as spectacle: a cathedral-height industrial hall lit by stadium floodlights, white tablecloths below. The brasserie menu runs wide — steak frites, seafood platters, bitterballen, a sticky toffee pudding worth saving room for — and that breadth makes it the rare place that seats grandparents, toddlers and date nights with equal ease. Service is young and quick-footed. Not the city's most refined kitchen, and it doesn't pretend to be; you come for good food inside an unforgettable room.