Review of self-service restaurant in the HEMA, Nieuwendijk, Amsterdam

Lunchtime, where can you go and grab a quick lunch in the Central Station area. Of course you can go to one of the counters in the Central Station, but then you can not sit down. Luckily close by is the HEMA on the Nieuwendijk. The HEMA is a famous department store in Holland that sells everything from clothes to kitchenware to DIY stuff. And they also have a restaurant. Well more a cafeteria than a restaurant. HEMA restaurants are self-service where you select the stuff you want from the buffet and they you pay at the end where you can also order a coffee.

The HEMA restaurant on the Nieuwendijk is located on the first floor and is quite spacious. There are some tables on the windows where you can look down on the shopping public. The first stop on the buffet is the drinks. They have soft drinks, bottled juices and smoothies and milk. I decided to take a smoothie and orange-pomegranate juice (the bottles are not too big ). Then there are different kinds of sandwiches ranging from roast beef to salmon to spicy chicken. Further on you have toasted sandwiches and typical dutch snacks and soups and of course different sweets like muffins and cake. And at the end you have the cash register where you also order the coffee. I took a sandwich with spicy chicken and roast beef.

After we paid at the cash register we took a place on the couch. All the window seats were taken. Now HEMA restaurants are typically populated by the elder part of the population and that was true today as well, but there were also some shopping mothers who decided to have break and some younger people. The bread of the sandwich was quite tough which made the sandwich somewhat difficult to eat, but it tasted good. Although the chicken was not spicy as advertised. Also in the roast beef sandwich the bread was quite tough, but still tasty. I was glad I had enough juice to wash down the bread. The juice tasted fine for the bottled kind.

The HEMA restaurant Nieuwendijk is a good place to grab a quick lunch. But bring your teeth for the tough bread!