Restaurant Vista is located at the Hollands Diep estuary in the historic town of Willemstad, just south of Rotterdam. The restaurant opened in 2016 and has held a Michelin star since 2018. It has a terrace with a nice view of the water, but although it is (supposed to be) summer, the weather was not appropriate for outside dining.

The restaurant offers à la carte as well as two tasting menus. We opted for 6 courses with cheese instead of dessert (127.50 euros). As there were four of us, I decided to select bottles from the wine list rather than going for the standard wine pairing. The restaurant has a very nice wine list, with a great selection of Burgundy. The sommelier knows the wines well and was a great help in suggesting pairings with the menu, taking into account our preferences. This resulted in a wine pairing of about 130 euros per person, following my personal rule of thumb to spend as much on the wine as on the food.

We started with a simple but nice cava with a nice minerality.

The first appetizer looked like a fishbone and included tomato, olive, and anchovies, and was delicious with the different flavors popping up in succession.

The second appetizer with piccalilly tasted strongly of yellow curry.

The third with peas, shrimp, and lovage was excellent, with great texture of the shrimp.

Before the final appetizer we switched to the first wine, an oaked Xarel-lo from Penedès in Spain. Nice oak, great saline minerality, and a nice creamy texture. Not as acidic as Xarel-lo often is.

It was a good pairing for the final appetizer of Dutch salted herring with beetroot. Salted herring can have a very pronounced flavor, but here that was balanced out by the sweet beetroot.

The first course of the tasting menu looked great. It was raw tuna with cucumber, tiger milk, peanuts, and tandoori spices. A very nice combination of flavors and an excellent pairing with the Xarel-lo.

The sommelier had suggested to drink the Xarel-lo with the first two courses, but as it was such a good pairing we did not have enough left for the second course. And so I asked to pour a glass of the ‘standard’ pairing with this dish, a Tzakolina from the Basque region in Spain. Saline with a creamy texture like the Xarel-lo, but less complexity. We tried both wines with the second course. (It was a nice gesture that the Tzakolina did not appear on the check.)

The second course looked even more beautiful than the first and it was even more delicious. It was a salad of European lobster, a great pairing with both wines. It really brought out the complexity of the Txakolina.

The next wine was a 2019 Saint-Aubine 1er Cru Les Cortons by Domaine Larue (100% Chardonnay, aged in oak with stirring of the lees). A wonderful white Burgundy, buttery, mineral, balanced.

This was an excellent pairing with the sea bass with a butter sauce, mussels, and pumpkin.

The next wine was a 2019 Grivault Meursault Clos du Murger. Very rich and powerful, but balanced and complex.

It was an excellent pairing for the turbot with mushroom sauce.

The wine for the main course was a 2019 Garnacha from Montsant in Spain. A very fruity but structured wine.

It was a good but not great pairing for the veal fillet with pancetta and a raviolo with stewed veal, veal jus, and zucchini. The veal was perfectly tender and medium rare (sous vide at 52C/126F) and it was a nice generous portion of meat (better than the tiny portions sometimes served as the main course of a tasting menu). The wine was a bit too fruity/jammy, I believe a red Burgundy would have worked better.

We did have a red Burgundy with the cheese, a 2019 Auxey-Duresses les Écusseaux by Boyer-Martenot. Velvety tannins and some nice cherry aromas.

We asked for a selection of medium-flavored hard cheeses and white mold cheeses, as those would work well with the wine. (The restaurant staff was more inclined to serve a wide selection of cheeses that would not all go with the same wine.)

The wine was indeed an excellent pairing for all of the cheeses we ended up with.

The meal ended with a nice selection of friandises.

We had a wonderful evening at Vista. Food, service, and wine, all were excellent. The service was informal and friendly as we like it, very attentive, and our meal served at the right pace. The sommelier has selected very nice wines for the wine list and knows how to pair them. The food was delicious and beautifully presented. The Michelin star is very well deserved.