Advocatuur: the Rebelious Cocktail Bar at Rosewood Amsterdam

Credits: Courtesy of Advocatuur

Amsterdam is perhaps best experienced from the water. During the inaugural Europe’s 50 Best Bars celebrations last June, I discovered one of the city’s newest cocktail destinations in exactly that way. I was invited by Advocatuur, the bar at Rosewood Amsterdam, for an exclusive boat experience through the city’s canals. Over a leisurely cruise, cocktails from the bar’s debut menu were served alongside a grazing board, turning the afternoon into an introduction not only to Advocatuur, but also to the Amsterdam that inspired it.

It felt particularly appropriate. Advocatuur is deeply connected to the city around it, from its location inside Amsterdam’s former Palace of Justice to a cocktail programme shaped by Dutch history, rebellion and local drinking culture.

From Palace of Justice to cocktail bar

Opened in May 2025, Advocatuur takes its name from the Dutch word for the ‘profession of law’, a direct reference to the history of the building it inhabits. Rosewood Amsterdam occupies the former Palace of Justice on Prinsengracht, within the city’s UNESCO-listed canal district. Inside, Advocatuur plays with the contrast between that institutional past and Amsterdam’s more rebellious character.

Led by Director of Bars & Beverage Yann Bouvignies, previously Head of Mixology at Scarfes Bar at Rosewood London, the bar was conceived around Rosewood’s A Sense of Place philosophy. Its interiors by Sagrada combine the building’s heritage with contemporary design, including bespoke rugs, eclectic furnishings and photographs of musicians by Amsterdam-based photographer Anton Corbijn.

Yann Bouvignies. Credits: Courtesy of Advocatuur

The bar itself is divided into three rooms, including an intimate distillery and a live performance space, with its own entrance opening towards the canal. The intention is to capture the Dutch idea of gezelligheid, that particular sense of warmth, conviviality and feeling at ease together. Experiencing Advocatuur from a boat gave that philosophy an interesting extension. Rather than separating the bar from its destination, the experience placed its cocktails directly within the landscape that shaped them.

The Will of the People

Advocatuur’s debut cocktail menu, The Will of the People, draws on another chapter of Amsterdam history: the Provo counterculture movement. Emerging during the 1960s, Provo challenged authority and conventional society through provocative and often playful forms of protest. Advocatuur translates that tension between establishment and rebellion into a menu of 15 signature cocktails, juxtaposing the rigid structure of law with the creativity and experimentation of contemporary bartending. Even its visual identity references the graffiti once found in the former prison cells of the building.

The Will of the People. Credits: Courtesy of Advocatuur

That influence also extends to the spirits themselves. Within Advocatuur’s distillery, the team produces its own jenever, PrØvo, created by Master Distiller Alex Davies of The Kyoto Distillery. Its name comes from provoceren, meaning ‘to provoke’, and the spirit combines ginger, tulsi, pink grapefruit, lemon, orange, rose and milk oolong tea using three different distillation methods. This is where Advocatuur becomes more interesting than a hotel bar with a historical theme. The references to Amsterdam are incorporated into the liquid itself.

Amsterdam, one cocktail at a time

The menu moves confidently between familiar flavours and more experimental combinations. Order + Disorder pairs Bacardi Carta Blanca with matcha orgeat, aloe vera and clarified guanabana. The eponymous Will of the People combines Michter’s Bourbon, St-Germain and palo santo with Super Cool CO₂, while Candy Store brings Roku Gin together with Amàrico, coconut and elderflower cream, peach and jasmine soda. There is a polished visual language throughout, something clearly visible in the cocktails themselves. Some arrive minimalist and architectural; others use unexpected textures, garnishes and serving rituals. Yet behind the presentation is a menu that continually returns to the relationship between order and disruption.

Order + Disorder. Credits: Courtesy of Advocatuur

One of its most distinctly Dutch ideas is Kopstuk, Advocatuur’s reinterpretation of the traditional kopstoot, or ‘head butt’, a pairing of jenever and beer associated with the country’s traditional brown cafés. Advocatuur serves its version with a quail egg seasoned with salt infused with PrØvo jenever botanicals and its Dutch house beer, Justitia POJ Lager x Jopen.

Kopstuk forms part of the bar’s playful ‘baby serves’ collection alongside miniature interpretations of the Pornstar, Alexander and Martinez, which can be ordered individually or as a flight. These details prevent the menu from becoming simply another exercise in elaborate modern mixology. There is a recognisable sense of Amsterdam running through it.

A bar beyond the bar

The boat experience made that connection particularly tangible. Drinking cocktails while moving through Amsterdam’s canals creates a different relationship with them. Architecture, bridges and waterside life become part of the setting, while the grazing board brings the experience closer to the conviviality Advocatuur wants to represent.

Advocatuur’s Boat Tour. Credits: Own archive

Food also has an important role at the bar itself. Its open kitchen uses two traditional tandoor ovens, bringing Indian flavours together with Dutch influences through small plates including Raj Kachori, baked samosa, lamb kofta and Dutch cheese bites. The concept may sound eclectic on paper: a former courthouse, Amsterdam counterculture, house-distilled jenever, Indian cooking, contemporary cocktails and live music. Yet Advocatuur uses those contrasts deliberately. After all, contradiction is central to its identity.

A new chapter for Amsterdam’s cocktail scene

Visiting Advocatuur during the inaugural Europe’s 50 Best Bars celebrations felt particularly fitting. The week brought together bartenders, bars and cocktail enthusiasts from across the continent, but the canal experience offered something more intimate: a chance to discover a new bar through the city it calls home. For me, that is where Advocatuur’s concept works best.

Credits: Courtesy of Advocatuur

Its history is not treated as decoration. The former Palace of Justice provides the language of law and order; Provo introduces rebellion; jenever connects the drinks to Dutch drinking culture; and Amsterdam itself provides the backdrop. Experiencing those cocktails while travelling along the canals brought all those elements together.

Advocatuur may occupy a building once associated with rules and judgement, but its approach to hospitality is considerably less conventional. Its invitation is instead to question, experiment and perhaps misbehave a little. In a city with rebellion written into its history, that feels entirely appropriate. I am looking forward to seeing what the Dutch cocktail bar will do next.