W Lounge, Amsterdam: The Drinks Are the Reason

We went up twice during our stay. Once in the late afternoon, when the doors onto the terrace had been folded back and the sun was coming in low across the room, and once close to midnight, when the fire was the brightest thing in the room.

Both times we stayed longer than we meant to. This is the bar review the hotel review could not hold, because the drinks and the kitchen deserve more than a paragraph, and because I want to be able to say plainly that the cocktails here were the best I have had anywhere.

The W Lounge at a Glance
🍸 The reason to come · Built-from-scratch signature cocktails, not classics with a twist. The Spice Courier (mezcal, coffee, jalapeño, grapefruit soda) is the standout.
🍽️ The food is real · A proper kitchen: order the whole focaccia first, then jamón de bellota, mini cheeseburgers and fries with basil aioli.
🏙️ Two rooms in one · Bright glass-walled space by day, fire-centred and lamp-lit after dark. Go twice if you can.
☀️ The terrace · Folding glass doors that double the seating on a warm day, looking onto the Royal Palace and Dam Square. Weather-dependent.
💡 Tip · Not a hotel guest? Reserve. The tables go on busy afternoons and weekends.

Getting a seat

Here is the practical thing worth knowing before anything else.

The W Lounge is open to anyone, not only to people staying at the hotel. But it is one of the better-known rooftops in central Amsterdam, and on a busy afternoon or a Friday night the tables go. Guests of the hotel are seated regardless. Everybody else should reserve rather than arrive hopefully, particularly in good weather, when the terrace doubles the demand and not the seating.

We were staying in the building, so this never became our problem. It would have been somebody else’s.

Three cocktails

The signature list is not a list of classics with a twist. Each drink is built from scratch and most of them contain something that has no business being in a cocktail glass.

Spice Courier was mine, and it was the best of the three. Mezcal and Don Julio Blanco tequila with coffee, jalapeño and pink grapefruit soda. What I liked was the jalapeño against the grapefruit: the heat arrives, the citrus takes it away again, and the smoke and coffee sit underneath without dominating. It is a drink I would not have ordered from a description and would order again on sight.

Bittersweet Symphony was Campari with passion fruit, orange and vanilla, served under a thick foam. The Campari does what Campari does. One sip and I was in Italy.

Amber Horizon was the one built on something local. Oude genever with mandarin oleo, toasted almond vermouth and chamomile. I like chamomile and I was not expecting to meet it in a cocktail. The finish was soothing, which is an odd thing to want from a drink at a rooftop bar and exactly what it delivered.

Genever is the Dutch juniper spirit that English gin descends from, and oude does not mean aged. It denotes the older style, made with a higher proportion of malt wine, which tastes closer to a young whisky than to gin.

There is one more thing in the Spice Courier worth pointing out, and I only noticed it because of where I come from.

The grapefruit soda is Three Cents, which is Greek. It was started in Athens in 2014 by three bartenders and an importer, after one of them got tired of making Palomas with grapefruit sodas that were either too sweet or impossible to get hold of in Europe, and began producing his own behind the bar of a tequila place in the city. The name comes from American soda fountains during the Depression, where plain carbonated water was two cents and syrup made it three.

So the best drink I had in Amsterdam was Mexican in its bones and finished with something made in Athens. Nobody at the bar knew that would mean anything to me. It did.

The food

The kitchen here is not an afterthought bolted onto a bar. The menu runs from bread through cured meat and small bites to things that would be a main course anywhere else, and everything is built to be shared across a low table rather than eaten off a set place.

Start with the focaccia.

It is the reason to arrive hungry rather than after dinner. It comes out whole, blistered, glossy with oil and heavily salted on top, with dips on the side. It is not a bread basket. It is a course.

The cured meat plate was jamón de bellota, 100% ibérico, sliced thin enough to be translucent at the edges and served on its own with nothing to distract from it. That is the right way to serve it and the wrong way to share it, because it disappears.

Marinated olives came with the small bites, in a divided pot with picks, green and dark kept apart. They are the thing to keep on the table rather than the thing to start with.

The mini cheeseburgers are exactly what they sound like and better than they need to be. They arrive two to a board, on skewers, and we ordered a second board. That is the most honest review I can give of anything on this menu.

The jumbo prawn with grilled corn, avocado and dried chilli sauce was the one dish that surprised me. Charred corn, avocado, coriander and enough chilli to notice. It reads like something from a different menu, and it was the plate we finished first.

And then there are fries with basil aioli, which is the order that stops a table of drinks from becoming a mistake, and which nobody regrets.

The service

This is the part I did not expect to be writing about, and it is the reason I would go back.

The hostess who seated us was genuinely kind rather than professionally pleasant, which is a distinction anyone who travels a lot will recognise instantly. The floor staff kept an eye on the table without hovering over it. Nothing arrived late and nothing arrived without an explanation of what it was.

We paid for all of it. Nobody knew a word of this was going to be written.

Afternoon, and then after dark

The two visits were different rooms.

In the afternoon it is a bright, planted, glass-walled space with the doors open and the city going about its business below. Sun across the floor, books along the mullions, people arriving with luggage on their way to check in.

At night the glass goes black, the fire becomes the centre of everything, and the lamps come up around the seating. Quieter in tone rather than in volume.

If forced to choose, I would take the afternoon for the light and the night for the room. Going twice is not an extravagance. It is the correct way to do it.

The terrace

The terrace is the reason the tables go on a warm day, and it is worth the wait if there is one.

From inside, the boundary is barely there even before anyone opens anything. Then, on a warm afternoon, they open it.

The doors fold right back, so the boundary between inside and outside stops existing. Beyond the parapet the roofline is turrets, spires and brick, close enough to read the detail on.

There is more than one terrace up here, which is not obvious from inside. The floor wraps the entire top of the building around an internal courtyard, so the outdoor space is broken into separate sections facing different ways rather than running as one long balcony. One side looks straight across at the Royal Palace and down onto Dam Square. The other three give onto rooftops, which in this part of the city means gables, chimneys and a great deal of brick at close range rather than a skyline in the distance.

The pool is on this floor as well, on its own deck, and it was the first heated rooftop pool in Amsterdam. It is not part of the lounge. A drink on the terrace and a swim are two separate arrangements, and it is worth knowing that before turning up in a swimsuit or expecting quiet.

The obvious caveat is the weather. This is northern Europe, the terrace season is short, and for a good part of the year those doors stay shut and the lounge is a glass room with a fire in it rather than an outdoor bar. We were lucky on the afternoon we sat there. The difference between this room with the doors open and the same room with them closed is considerable, and anyone booking specifically for the terrace should look at the forecast first and have a view about whether the inside alone is worth the trip. It is, but that is a different evening.

Bubbly Tips

• Reserve if you are not staying at the hotel. The lounge is open to everyone, but the tables go on busy afternoons and at weekends. Hotel guests are seated without booking.
• Order the focaccia first and share nothing else until it is gone. It arrives whole and it is a course, not an accompaniment.
• Go twice if the trip allows it. Once in daylight and once after dark. The afternoon and the night are two different rooms, and the same seat gives you both.
• Ask what is on the signature list rather than defaulting to a classic. The house drinks are built rather than tweaked, and they are the reason to come.
• If you like heat, ask for the jalapeño drink. The chilli is real and the grapefruit takes it away again. It is the best thing on the menu.
• The genever cocktail is the local one. Oude genever is the Dutch ancestor of gin, and it tastes nothing like it. Worth trying here rather than neat.
• Sit facing the glass. The room is designed to be looked out of, and the seating along the windows is better than the seating in the middle.
• Warm afternoons mean the doors fold back, which roughly doubles the seating and is when the terrace is worth queueing for.
• This is not a cheap round. It sits at the top end for Amsterdam, so treat it as the evening rather than the first stop of one.
• Pair it with Dam Square rather than the museum quarter. The Royal Palace is a few minutes’ walk, so the lounge works as the end of an afternoon in the centre.

Final Thoughts

I have been in a lot of hotel bars with a view, and most of them are selling the view. This one is selling the drinks, and the view is what it happens to have.

The Spice Courier is the one I will think about. Mezcal, coffee, chilli and a Greek grapefruit soda, six floors above a city that has nothing to do with any of those things, made by somebody who clearly enjoyed putting it together. Add a whole focaccia, a plate of jamón, a fire in the middle of the room and a hostess who made two strangers welcome on both visits, and the reason to return is not the roofline.

Until next time!

xoxo,
Bubbly 🎈