Incanto Italian Restaurant – Amsterdam - Holland: Located on the second floor at Munt Square, the Incanto Italian Restaurant offers an enjoyable view of the busy city streets, flower markets, and canals of Amsterdam. The restaurant is small and cozy with a classic Italian kitchen and homey interior with hardwood floors and large picture windows on opposite walls. The tables were covered with white tablecloths and had candles as centerpieces. While the place was not exactly trendy or chic, it was a clean and decent enough place for a quick casual lunch.

We were there on a weeknight and there was one large group that filled the whole restaurant with loud chatter. Part of the problem was that the tables were arranged very close together; the table next to us was less than a foot away. Needless to say, this is not the place for an intimate dinner.

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For starters we had cream of cauliflower soup with mussels. If it sounds strange, you’re right; it was. The soup itself was good, but the mussels did not add a thing to the dinner.
For our second course, we had ravioli with goat cheese and artichoke; the ravioli was undercooked—tasty but hard. For the main course, we had Venison Deer Back, cooked medium rare, with a delicious sauce but with pureed parsnips that were too sweet and too velvety soft for the venison. Desert was a warm chocolate cake with a gooey center and pistachio ice cream. It was delicious and probably the best part of the dinner.

The wine list consisted of all Italian wines with over 150 selections.

The service was pleasant but extremely, extremely slow. It took us almost three hours for our dinner—way too long for the casual Italian dinner we were having. The prices, however, were pretty reasonable.

It seemed the chef tried too hard to fuse together different tastes, but for me, the combinations simply did not work. The overall experience was less than stellar. I give the Incanto Italian Restaurant a rating of between bombastic and not.



What I liked: The venison deer back, the gooey chocolate cake

What I didn’t like: Mussels in my cream of cauliflower soup, pureed parsnips with my venison

Restaurant Review Rating: Between bombastic and not.


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