Amsterdam, when someone else is paying

There is a particular kind of dinner that happens when the bill is going somewhere else, and most cities handle it badly — the restaurants that court expense accounts tend to be the ones coasting on them. Amsterdam is unusually good at the opposite: the rooms here that can absorb a four-figure evening are, for the most part, the same rooms doing the most interesting cooking.

The rule for this list is simple. It has to be a room you would still book if you were paying. Everything else is just a nice tablecloth.

Start at the counter

Two stars, no theatre, and a counter that turns a business dinner into something people actually enjoy. Order the menu they tell you to order; the negotiating is over the moment you sit down.

Then the room with the view

If the evening needs to impress somebody who has not been to Amsterdam before, this is the shortcut. The grandeur is real rather than staged, which is rarer than it sounds.

And stay put

The argument for staying where you ate is not laziness, it is arithmetic: the taxi home at midnight costs more in goodwill than the room does in euros.