Restaurant in Roosendaal, Netherlands
Michelin-starred creative French, book early.
Restaurant 1857 holds a Michelin star (2024) and a 4.8 Google rating, making it the most credentialed creative French option in Roosendaal at the €€€ price point. Chef Joey van Heesbeen's French-Asian cooking is technically sharp and genuinely ambitious. Booking is hard; plan three to four weeks ahead minimum. Thursday and Friday lunch is the most practical entry point for visitors passing through North Brabant.
Picture a narrow street in central Roosendaal, a former coach house with thick walls and an open kitchen where an old horse trough still sits in plain view. That detail matters: it tells you something about how Restaurant 1857 operates. This is not a venue that has scrubbed away its past to perform a version of fine dining. The space is elegant but unstuffy, the kind of room where the architecture does quiet work in the background while the food takes the foreground. If you are the kind of diner who finds Michelin-starred restaurants cold or theatrical, 1857 is the counterargument. Book it.
The spatial story at 1857 is one of contrast held in balance. A coach house by origin, the dining room carries that history in its proportions and materials, while the contemporary fit-out keeps the atmosphere from tipping into museum territory. The open kitchen is the centrepiece: watching a kitchen brigade work from your table adds a layer of engagement that closed kitchens cannot offer. The room reads as intimate rather than grand, which makes it well-suited to occasions where conversation matters as much as the food. For those planning a special dinner, the setting does a significant amount of work before the first course arrives. For those comparing against grander Dutch rooms like Ciel Bleu in Amsterdam or Inter Scaldes in Kruiningen, 1857 is the more personal choice.
Chef Joey van Heesbeen cooks creative French cuisine with a clear lean toward Asian technique and flavour architecture. The Michelin inspectors describe dishes that are technically impressive, visually striking, and at times complex. His beef Wellington reworks the classic with miso mustard and a powder made from dried vegetable scraps. Langoustine arrives briefly seared alongside a shellfish-based XO sauce, with langoustine mayonnaise, yuzu gel, and caviar adding saline intensity. These are not timid plates. The cooking asks you to pay attention, and rewards you for doing so.
The menu structure gives you two routes: a set menu, for which a vegetarian version is available, or an à la carte selection. The set menu is the more coherent expression of what the kitchen is trying to do, and for first-time visitors, it is the better choice. Close the meal with coffee or tea and the dessert trolley, which is handled by Joke, the hostess and pastry chef whose contribution gives the ending of the meal the same care the kitchen brings to the savoury courses. The combination of a skilled front-of-house lead who is also the pastry chef is not something you encounter often, and it shows in the consistency of the experience from arrival to final bite.
1857 opens for lunch on Thursdays and Fridays only, running from midday to 5 PM before transitioning into the evening service. Saturday dinner is available from 6 PM. Sunday and Monday the restaurant is closed. For food and travel enthusiasts who plan around their meals, Thursday or Friday lunch is the format to consider: it gives you access to the kitchen at its most precise without the full theatrical weight of an evening service. It is also, in practical terms, the path of least resistance for travellers passing through the North Brabant region. If you are already visiting Tribeca in Heeze or De Lindehof in Nuenen during a regional tour, building a Thursday or Friday lunch at 1857 into the itinerary makes geographic and gastronomic sense.
For a broader view of what the region offers, see our full Roosendaal restaurants guide. If you are planning a longer stay, our Roosendaal hotels guide and our Roosendaal experiences guide are worth checking alongside this booking.
Restaurant 1857 holds a Michelin one star (2024), which in a country with a dense concentration of starred restaurants is a meaningful credential rather than a participation award. Its Google rating sits at 4.8 from 149 reviews, a figure that is high and consistent enough to suggest the experience translates reliably across different types of diners, not just critics and enthusiasts. Among the Netherlands' creative French restaurants at the €€€ price point, that combination of award recognition and public approval is harder to find than you might expect. For context, most of its Dutch peers at the starred level operate at €€€€, which makes 1857 one of the more accessible entry points into serious contemporary cooking in the country.
Booking difficulty at Restaurant 1857 is rated Hard. A Michelin-starred room with limited covers in a mid-sized Dutch city fills quickly, particularly for weekend dinners and the short Thursday-Friday lunch windows. Plan at minimum three to four weeks ahead; further out for Saturday evenings. Reservations: book as early as possible, advance reservations are strongly advised. Hours: Tuesday-Wednesday dinner 6-11 PM; Thursday-Friday lunch 12-5 PM, dinner 6-11:30 PM; Saturday dinner 6-11 PM; closed Sunday and Monday. Budget: €€€ price range, positioning this as one of the more accessible Michelin-starred options in the Netherlands. Address: Molenstraat 18, 4701 JS Roosendaal. Dietary: vegetarian set menu available. For those visiting with wine in mind, our Roosendaal wineries guide and our Roosendaal bars guide offer further options for building a complete itinerary.
Comparable creative French venues at the same price tier worth knowing: La Provence in Driebergen-Rijsenburg and LIZZ in Gouda. If your travel puts you further north, De Groene Lantaarn in Staphorst and Brut172 in Reijmerstok are worth considering. For those willing to increase budget for a step up in ambition, FG in Rotterdam and De Nieuwe Winkel in Nijmegen represent the next tier.
The database does not confirm a bar counter or bar seating arrangement at 1857. The venue is a former coach house with an open kitchen as its focal point, and the format is table-service oriented. If counter or bar dining is your preference, contact the restaurant directly before booking to ask about available seating configurations.
Yes, for first-time visitors. The set menu is the more coherent expression of what chef Joey van Heesbeen is doing with creative French-Asian cooking, and it is what earned the venue its Michelin star. The à la carte option exists, but if you are spending at the €€€ level and making a special trip, the set menu gives you the full picture. A vegetarian version is available. Compared to €€€€ Dutch alternatives like Aan de Poel or De Librije, 1857 offers comparable ambition at a lower price tier.
Specific seat count and private dining details are not confirmed in the available data. The venue's intimate coach house format suggests capacity is limited, which means large groups should contact the restaurant directly well in advance. For a party of more than six, reaching out months ahead is advisable given the Hard booking difficulty rating. For alternative Roosendaal options that might suit groups, see our full Roosendaal restaurants guide.
It is one of the better options in North Brabant for exactly that. The Michelin one star (2024), the 4.8 Google rating, the charming room in a historic coach house, and the pastry-chef hostess who personally runs the dessert trolley all add up to an occasion that feels considered rather than generic. At €€€ rather than €€€€, you get serious cooking without the price tag of larger Dutch destination restaurants. For a birthday, anniversary, or significant dinner, this is a strong booking.
Possibly, but with caveats. The open kitchen format makes solo dining more engaging than a conventional closed-kitchen room, since there is always something to observe. However, specific solo or counter seating is not confirmed in the available data. If you are travelling alone and want the full tasting menu experience, contact the restaurant ahead of booking to confirm whether single-cover reservations are accommodated during your preferred service. Thursday or Friday lunch, with shorter service pressure, may be the more practical solo option.
| Venue | Price | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Restaurant 1857 | €€€ | — |
| De Librije | €€€€ | — |
| Aan de Poel | €€€€ | — |
| De Nieuwe Winkel | €€€€ | — |
| Fred | €€€€ | — |
| De Lindehof | €€€€ | — |
A quick look at how Restaurant 1857 measures up.
The venue database does not confirm a dedicated bar counter for dining. 1857 operates in a converted coach house with a focused set menu and à la carte format, so the experience is designed around seated tables rather than casual bar dining. If bar-style flexibility is what you are after, this is not the right format — the Michelin-starred room runs as a structured dinner service.
For the price point (€€€) and the Michelin one-star credential (2024), yes. Chef Joey van Heesbeen's set menu delivers technically ambitious, visually striking food — think miso-laced beef Wellington and langoustine with XO sauce and yuzu gel — that justifies the format. A vegetarian version is available. If you prefer to pick and choose without committing to a full progression, there is also an à la carte option, which is less common at this tier of Dutch fine dining.
1857 is a former coach house with limited covers, and booking difficulty is rated Hard — so large groups require planning well in advance. The venue does not confirm private dining availability in the database, which means you should check the venue's official channels before assuming a group booking is straightforward. For parties of four or more at this price tier, De Librije in Zwolle offers a larger operation with more structural capacity for group dining.
Yes, and it is one of the stronger cases for it in North Brabant. The Michelin one-star room has a coach house setting with genuine atmosphere rather than corporate formality, and the pastry chef-hostess Joke runs front of house in a way that skews warm over stiff. At €€€ per head with striking, inventive food, it delivers the occasion without the stuffiness that can make some starred rooms feel uncomfortable. Book early — it fills fast.
Possible, but not the obvious choice. 1857's set menu format in a coach house dining room works better for twos than solo seats — there is no confirmed counter or chef's table option in the database that would make solo dining feel intentional rather than incidental. If solo omakase-style counter dining is your preference, a counter-focused venue would serve you better. That said, solo diners who are comfortable with the format and the €€€ spend will not be poorly treated at a room with this standard of hospitality.
Keep this venue in your Pearl passport, rate it after you visit, and track it alongside every other place you collect.
