My wife and I took a trip to Amsterdam, and, while there, we are a ton of really delicious shit. Here’s a quick rundown of the food.
Cafes and bars offer a great way to sit down, relax and hydrate. They also have some great snacks.
Arendsnest had this huge slab of cured pork belly:
Cafe Belgique had some insane olives. HUGE!
The Louis Bar ham and cheese tosti was super low budget.
Such an awesome bar, by the way. The building has been there since the early 1600s..
Wester Cafe won the bar snacks competition. Bitterballen, fried sausages, and fried cheese wrapped in egg roll wrappers.
But we also liked the fried seafood and cocktails at Pompa.
The bars in general were really awesome and old. This one (In t’ Aepjen) was ape themed for some reason:
One of the most impressive bars we went to was actually at our hotel, the De L’Europe hotel. There was a speakeasy in the back called Chapter 1896, and it had, basically, a museum of Macallan selections.
The hotel had great breakfast included, and with a nice view too.
The Heineken Experience gave me a new appreciation for the brand.
Other bars we enjoyed:
Dutch Courage and Wynand Fockink for genever.
Cafe t’ Smalle
The Old Sailor
Kikkie
Kaap Tein
Cafe Staalmeesters
Of course we got steak along the way. Sagardi was one of the best European steakhouses I’ve ever been to. This is a Basque/Spanish style steakhouse, serving vaca vieja (old dairy cow). I generally don’t love this stuff, but here, it was amazing. A 9/10 for the steak (rib eye), and I think the total score would be somewhere around 90 as well.
Amsterdam is known for its pancakes. We went to Upstairs Pancakes, a small 4-table spot that’s up a very steep set of stairs. We loved the bacon, brie and honey pancake. Maybe the best bite of the trip!
I think the best sweet items we had were the stroopwafel at Hans Egstorf (overpriced tourist trap, and I prefer the plain instead of the ones with toppings), and the apple pie at Winkel (absolutely insane – so fucking good).
We enjoyed some find dining experiences while we were there, too. First, the very long but very delicious meal at Kaagman & Kortekaas.
Next, the wonderful meal at De Silveren Spiegel:
Hard to choose a favorite between the two.
We also had some Indonesian food, as the Indonesian people have a long and interconnected history with the Dutch through the spice trade and colonialism/immigration. We had a great lunch at Sampurna.
Our worst meal in terms of both service and food was at t’ Westerhuys. It sucks when you get a double whammy like that.
Too much of a tourist trap, perhaps, but at least we got to try some more Dutch food (meatball stamppot, ossenwurst – like a beef carpaccio or tartare). The dessert was the best part of the meal (tompouce – tart crust with strawberry icing on top and custard in between – kind of like a pop tart or toaster strudel).
It’s housed in a beautiful old church building annex though.
We sampled a shitload of cheeses, both in the countryside at a cheesemaking facility, and in the town at shops.
We had some great french fries at the Keukenhof tulip gardens.
Here are some flower pics:
On our last night, we had a seafood feast at The Seafood Bar.
An amazing trip, and I feel like we barely scratched the surface. There were still a lot of places that we didn’t get to try on our itinerary (food halls, bars, etc). I think we need a return trip!