You can turn this one up to Eleven...

I initially thought I'd found a crack house instead of a restaurant.....the graffiti covered walls and rubble-strewn forecourt of the old postal building did not look like the entrance to one of Amsterdam's most fashionable eateries....it looked like I was lost.

I eventually found the service elevator (beneath the explicit picture of a woman, who looked like she had tripped over and had her skirt fling over her head - it must have been a particularly nasty fall, because she seemed to have also lost her panties in the accident). The double doors opened to a large loft with communal dining tables and a crowded bar.

'Elf' (Eleven in English) is mostly frequented by younger and far more fashionably aware patrons than me, but I wasn't the only middle-aged executive in the room. I spotted my colleagues from Amsterdam at the bar and joined them for a beer. The views over Amsterdam were sensational and so was the food.

The toilets in Elf were set up like a nightclub - there was mood lighting and loud music. I didn't hang around in there for too long - it's not the type of place you should strike up a friendly conversation with one of the other patrons.

We eventually left the restaurant the same way we came in (the woman in the large picture above the lift was still struggling to get up). Then it was a brisk walk back through the red light district to our hotel on the southern outskirts of the city.