Rosa, warm and earthy company in De Pijp

Rosa bakes, which sounds like a small detail until you understand how she talks about it. Bread mostly, on Sundays, in a kitchen that is far too small for the ambition, and she will describe the fifteenth attempt at a sourdough with the seriousness other people reserve for their careers. It tells you what you need to know: she likes things that take time and cannot be rushed by wanting them more. She is 25 and 160 centimetres, curvy, with long curly chestnut brown hair and brown eyes, and a relaxed boho elegance that never looks laboured. Earthy is the word guests reach for. She is warm without effort, easygoing to the point of being restful, and she has no interest at all in being impressive, which is precisely why she is.

Records are the collection she refuses to justify, hunted through the shops of the city and played properly rather than streamed, and Tina is the one who understands the compulsion. Galleries take up her free afternoons, the small ones more than the famous ones, and she would rather show you something odd in a side street than queue for something you have already seen on a postcard.

Her own streets are in De Pijp, five minutes from the market and close to the small kitchens she likes, with the centre a short hop from her door. Her English is unhurried and easy. Rosa is the right booking when you have had a week of formality and would like an evening where nobody is performing anything at all. She dresses well without dressing up, she asks real questions, and she has the rare habit of letting an answer finish before she starts on her own. Her hours begin at the same fare as every other name on the board.

Somewhere small and unpolished is the whole brief. Rosa has never tried to be impressive, which is exactly what makes her so, and her ideal evening is the one where nobody at the table is performing anything at all.

Dinner in De Pijp at one of the small kitchens she eats in herself, a few streets down from the market. She asks real questions and lets the answers finish, which is rarer than it should be. Ask about the bread and you get fifteen attempts at one sourdough described with more gravity than most people give their jobs. Afterwards, if the shops are still open, a record she has been hunting for months, or a small gallery down a side street rather than the thing already printed on every postcard.