Restaurant Vis&Meer

Vis & Meer is closely located to Utrecht Centraal Station. It’s only a 10 minute walk, although it does require some Google Mapping to find the exact street, as it’s hidden away a little bit.
Hidden and somewhat tiny looking, it reminded me of the TARDIS somewhat. Super tiny from the outside, huge from the inside. The restaurant has a very nice and clean industrial looking décor. There’s an open kitchen, allowing guests to have a peek inside!
We visited with a group of 14 people, which meant that we could not have a la carte as an option. Instead, we were given a separate menu with an array of options. Something we enjoyed very much!
The staff is incredibly friendly, they will give you suggestions and do not mind explaining if there are any unclarities.
Even though the restaurant is mainly focused on fish, there are a lot of other options as well (both vegetarian and for the meat lovers!)

When your seafood restaurant’s address reads «3 herring street» you know you are in the right place. Vis & meer has an unassuming décor and no frills good food at a reasonable price point (for Dutch going-​out pricing that is). They carry a fine bar and beers from the Bavaria brewery. We tried the oyster sampler with creuses, fines claires and zeeuwse platte oysters. In increasing degree of fanciness, and € 2+ each I set my expectations pretty high. However if you are coming from New England, you are already a bit spoiled when it comes to our shellfish. I found the least fancy Creuses to be the best, they were mildly briny, had a decent liver and were fresh with cucumber notes. However the two creuses we had on the plate differed from one another quite a bit as one was fairly shallow and the other had a deep belly, we are not serving leftovers here are we?. Anyways, the fines claires did not have anything going for them, fine and clear they were but with no taste to present. Leaving the best to last, the zeeuwse platte oysters also left me wishing I had skipped on this north sea delicacy, it is bland but also distractingly metallic, leaving a tingling on the sides of your tongue long after the meat goes down the hatch. If I was to go again, I would stick to the Creuses all night! The next dish was scallops on a bed of cauliflower purée. Perfectly seared for a caramelized crust top and bottom and soft juicy insides. And our main was an eye opening mussles in pastis with fries. Now, every dick and harry makes mussles with white wine but I had not had it with pastis before. See, the Dutch have a very peculiar relation with Anise, they eat it sweet in their candy and have that correlation that is hard to shake off. However if you are worldly to have enjoyrd Pastis or Raki or Ouzo with seafood, you my friend are in for a treat of your life! Try it and you will be at the next postcard monger, writing home about it ;)

A very nice location if you like fish. I had a bouillabaisse as appetizer and it tasted delicious the taste was not too fishy and it contained good quality mussels. For the main course we had the fish platter containing all sorts of different mussel types, shrimps, tuna fish, crab legs and Dutch shrimps which is a small variety but very tasteful. The dish was accompanied by different dressings. I was pleasantly surprised by the freshness of the seafood. The service was perfect.

Always nice. Good food, nice service, spacious place so handy for larger groups. A la carte not always possible with larger groups, but then you’ll get a more standard menu with a limited number of choices.
even for people that are not as much fish fans as the name suggests, there is still a enough choice. Larger groups should make a reservation to make sure to have a table, especially on Thursday, Fridays.