The Best Places to Eat and Drink in Amsterdam

A short walk from Amsterdam Centraal, Pianeta Terra is a modern Italian restaurant spread across two quietly elegant rooms where nothing feels overdone. The kitchen leans on organic ingredients from small local producers, and the housemade bread and pasta are the kind that make you slow down. The menu moves through four tasting paths, with wine pairing available. It landed at #31 on 50 Top Italy's Best Italian Restaurants in the World list.

1. 50 Top Italy #31 · The Best Italian Restaurants In The World

The ritual starts at a marble counter with an aperitif, then the host walks you through the kitchen before you settle into a dining room that reads like a quietly confident Scandinavian interior. The chef cut his teeth with Sergio Herman, and it shows in cooking that is seasonal and precise without being stiff. The sommelier pairs with real attentiveness rather than autopilot. A creative tasting-menu restaurant that earns its calm.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name is a clue: every great sauce begins with a roux, and this elegant brasserie takes that seriously, building dishes on sauces robust enough to be the point. The cooking roams freely, with playful combinations and textures that keep things from getting too solemn. The sommelier pairs wines with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you feel the choice matters. Grab a seat at the long dining counter if you can.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The open kitchen fills most of the back wall, and the noise it generates is half the reason to come. This cosy Italian restaurant on Overtoom pulls off house-made pasta and a tiramisu that tastes like the platonic version, while quietly folding in Dutch cheese or katsuobushi for a little mischief. The service team has the warmth of a place that doesn't need to try very hard, because it hasn't had to for a long time.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Corner spot across from the RAI, Toet is a lively Mediterranean restaurant with a vintage room that feels looser than it looks. Seats at the open kitchen go fast, which tells you something about the crowd. The cooking leans into bold, spicy Mediterranean flavors, à la carte, seven nights a week, which in this neighborhood of conference dinners and early exits is a minor act of defiance.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Two cocktail bars for the price of one grand hotel: a wood-panelled, nautical-themed room tucked below the lobby, and a sleeker, louder sibling upstairs with a sound system that makes the chandeliers nervous. Both open onto terraces over the Amstel River, which is the kind of view that makes a second round feel responsible. The bartenders take the classics seriously, and the whole operation carries the unhurried ease of somewhere that has been doing this for a very long time.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

A pizza shop in De Pijp with a sharp Calabrian focus, where the menu doesn't wander into pasta or small plates because the pizza doesn't need the help. The dough comes in a spelt option that lands lighter than you'd expect. The room feels deliberately spare, the kind of place that has decided exactly what it is and stopped there. Listed among 50 Top Pizza Europe's Excellent Pizzerias.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

The oven greets you at the door, which tells you everything about priorities. This Amsterdam pizzeria runs on contemporary Neapolitan pies, with a dough the team has spent years quietly obsessing over. The menu pulls double duty: classic Campanian dishes like genovese and parmigiana appear as standalone plates and as pizza toppings. Simple, unfussy, and genuinely bilingual in its appeal to both Italian expats and everyone else on Amstelveenseweg.

1. 50 Top Pizza 50 Top Pizza Europe Excellent Pizzerias

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

Bar Mokum is a De Pijp cocktail bar you reach by climbing a steep staircase that tends to jam up with out-of-towners hunting for a vibe, so reserving a seat is the polite move. The drinks are twists on classics with Dutch slang for names, and the back room is dressed up as the Red Light District, which is the closest you'll get to Amsterdam's most photographed street without the photographing. Food stops at olives and nuts.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

Bar Strangelove is the bar inside Lab111, a cinema in a former laboratory, so the whole thing already feels like a plot point. The menu commits fully to film puns, with pizzas named after indie movies and cocktails that include a Halle Blueberry and a Sacred Kir. You can come for a screening or skip it, and the pizza beats cinema nachos either way. Expect relaxed prices and people who say "auteur" without irony.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

A brown café in a centuries-old distillery building on one of Amsterdam's prettiest canals, where the dark wood and stained glass feel less like décor and less like history and more like they just never left. In summer, tables spill out to the water; in winter, everyone piles in and the cozy interior earns that word. Beer is affordable for this part of town, and the kitchen runs a short menu of Dutch bar snacks and classics.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

A butter tower behind the marble bar sets the tone at this apéro-style café and seafood spot on the Vijzelgracht. The menu leans southern European but the fish is properly Dutch, shifting with the seasons and leaning heavily on what the North Sea actually offers. On sunny afternoons the terrace fills fast, and inside, little glasses of Campari-based cocktails catch the light in a way that makes staying for one more very easy to justify.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

Café Gollem is a small brown bar on a quiet lane off Spuistraat, devoted to Belgian beer in a city that mostly drinks Heineken out of habit. The menu runs long on ales, krieks, and geuzes, plus the rare Westvleteren, a bottle people reportedly drive across a border to buy by the crate. Expect dim light, cramped tables, and patrons who read the beer list like a chapter of scripture.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

The bar at No.18 is a bruine café, which means brown walls, brown ceiling, and centuries of cigarette smoke baked into the woodwork, all of it legally protected so nobody can touch it. Locals call it "standing Hoppe" because that's what you do. An old-school Amsterdam pub that has been around forever, it's the kind of place that makes a gin and tonic feel like a historical document.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

A vegetarian tasting menu spot on a quiet intersection just beyond Amsterdam's tourist scrum, Chez Nina is the project of Swedish chef Nina Olsson, who blends Mediterranean and East Asian ideas into seasonal plates. The natural wine list skews toward female winemakers, and the cocktails run to things like chlorophyll matcha horchata, which is either a reason to come or a reason to pause, depending on who you are.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

This is a Japanese-themed cocktail bar on Reguliersdwarsstraat, Amsterdam's strip of loud, neighboring bars, with private karaoke rooms for the friend who needs to sing at least weekly. The drinks are sharper than the packed floor suggests, with shochu, absinthe, and shiso oil showing up in the cocktails, plus sake if your vocal cords need looking after. Expect to be shoulder to shoulder with strangers who'll be friends by round two.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

The kapsalon, a dish with a genuinely tangled origin story, is the whole reason to be here: fries buried under döner meat, a slice of Dutch cheese, and a ladle of garlic sauce and sambal. Sinbad is a casual counter spot in Oosterpark, and the veal döner version is the classic order, though the chicken has its own following. Load up from the self-service sauces, then watch a broad cross section of Amsterdam cycle through the door while you eat.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

The mustard spoon is communal, and nobody seems to mind. Van Dobben is an old-school Amsterdam lunchroom that has been slinging croquettes since before your grandparents were dating, and in a city where every café claims a croquette, this one sets the baseline. Soft white rolls, fried things, and a broodje tartaar topped with raw beef, boiled egg, and a generous heap of mayo for the committed. Retro and unpretentious in equal measure.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

The staff will tell you, unprompted, that this is not a pizzeria but a "pizza-driven wine bar," which is the kind of thing that could go badly but somehow doesn't. Sourdough miso margarita pies share the menu with clams and lamb sausage, and low-intervention wines sit alongside basil-scented cocktails. Amsterdam-Noord, and worth booking ahead, which should tell you everything about how the room fills up.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

An old-school Amsterdam bakery that mills its own flour from Dutch-grown wheat inside the city, which is either charming or slightly mad depending on your priorities. Nearly everything on the counter follows from that mill, including oliebollen in winter with a crust that earns their reputation, and speculaas ice cream sandwiches rolled in hazelnuts and rosemary when summer arrives. A seasonal place, so check before you go.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Jazz Café Alto is a small, dark jazz bar on a Leidseplein side street, a stretch otherwise given over to steakhouses and pubs for people who just left a coffee shop. There's live music every night, and the room fills up fast, so arrive early. They don't serve food, so eat first. The stools at the bar are the smart seat, since the drink line gets long once the band starts.

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A market stall at the Ganzenhoef Bijlmer Saturday market in Amsterdam-Zuidoost, Lila Bara turns out Hindustani Surinamese baras, savory fried breads filled with spiced chicken and topped with mango achar. The team shapes mung bean dough by hand, fries it to order, and the line that forms around the handwritten wooden menu does most of the advertising. Grab a coconut dawet from a neighboring stall before you get there; you'll want it.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

This is a tea house on Rozengracht where the cocktails contain no alcohol and nobody seems bothered. You sit at low tables over tea-infused drinks, CBD lattes, and herby tonics, while upstairs the quieter rooms host traditional ceremonies, some guided by staff happy to get into tea mythology. The shelves of loose leaf and teaware exist for anyone ready to retire the grocery-store tea bag.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

Paindemie is a two-level burger and sando spot on Kinkerstraat, and you walk in through what passes for a Japanese subway station, neon signs and plastic chairs included. Upstairs, a marble-topped speakeasy pours sake, beer, and classic cocktails under warm lamps, and the menu pairs a Big Mac riff on pain de mie with an escargot toastie served on actual plates. Reserve upstairs, or take your drink down to the egg salad sando.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

One plate a day, take it or leave it. Paon Bali is a no-fuss Indonesian set-meal spot where that plate arrives as a mound of rice ringed by eight to ten small portions of meat, vegetables, and sambals. Bali's Hindu roots mean pork shows up where much of Indonesian cooking won't go, and the roast pork and pork in sweet soy are the reasons regulars already know what they're ordering before they walk in.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

This is the Brouwerij 't IJ taproom, a round pavilion planted in the middle of Vondelpark, which makes it the rare beer stop where the toughest decision is deck chair or jeu de boules. Expect the usual 't IJ pours, plus sandwiches, pastries, and smoothies for the strollers and dog owners drifting through. A band sometimes plays nearby, and the Dutch weather supplies its own drama.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

The whole point here is standing upright, glass touching your lips, because the low wooden bar makes it nearly impossible to do otherwise. That's how they've done it in this old Amsterdam tasting house for centuries, and the room looks exactly as you'd expect: unchanged, unhurried, and slightly miraculous. The jenever and house liqueurs come from a small distillery a few doors down, and the list is long enough to keep you honest about how many you'll try.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam

A cocktail bar inside the Pulitzer hotel where the drinks were developed with a New York fragrance house, so the menu is as much about what you smell as what you taste. Forest-green walls, marble, glowing orbs, and hushed Art Deco calm make the whole thing feel like stepping into someone's very tasteful 1930s study. Order slowly; there's no reason to rush.

1. The Infatuation The 20 Best Bars In Amsterdam
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery
3. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

Samuka Kenneh's fine dining restaurant on Nassaukade is the Netherlands' first to put West African cooking at the center of a set-menu format, which already makes it something. The kitchen reworks Ghanaian and Liberian traditions into tasting courses, threading Atlantic fish like mackerel and sardines through dishes that remind you West Africa is closer than Amsterdam's usual French and Italian influences suggest.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

Fruit stacked in the window, cheerful tins of olives, trays of vibrantly colored food: this sunny corner cafe serves a rotating, mostly vegetarian spread rooted in Algerian home cooking and whatever the season offers locally. You pick a few dishes, order some mint tea, and the staff warms everything up for you. It's the kind of lunch spot that makes a to-do list feel very negotiable.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

The sandwiches won and the records lost, which is how Amsterdam ended up with one of its great lunch counters. Tjin's is a Surinamese sandwich and roti shop that has been around forever, serving char siu pork buns, bacalao, tempeh, roti rolls, and pom alongside house hot sauce and pickled cucumbers. Wash it down with a Fernandes soda and you're doing it right. The menu is short on pretension and long on the kind of flavors that make a detour feel obvious in hindsight.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

The rijsttafel, a colonial-era Dutch invention despite its Indonesian soul, arrives here as eighteen small dishes covering every corner of the table. This warm, bustling Indonesian restaurant on Utrechtsestraat is the kind of place that makes a grey Amsterdam afternoon feel manageable. The vegetarian version, built around tempeh, eggplant, and sharp pickles, tends to outshine the standard spread.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

Four tables, a staircase steep enough to make you reconsider, and a strong claim to being Europe's smallest pancake restaurant. This is a Dutch pancake spot, which means the pancakes land somewhere between a crepe and the fluffy American kind, piled with toppings both sweet and savory. The building has been around forever, the decor leans old Dutch, and the owners often cook your meal themselves. Bring patience and a low ceiling tolerance.

1. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants in Amsterdam

Every surface in this cocktail bar reflects back the drink in your hand, which is either poetic or a little overwhelming depending on how many Bols liqueurs you correctly identified in the tasting hall you walked through to get here. The House of Bols runs a tour before letting you in, which means entry comes with a cocktail and a genever shot built into the price. The mirror room is the payoff, and the liqueur selection behind the bar is genuinely hard to argue with.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Tin beer signs and chalk boards cover the varnished plywood walls, and the bare wooden floor suggests nobody ever worried much about the mess. This is a traditional Belgian beer bar in Amsterdam, with a list of well over a hundred bottles and a handful of draught taps weighted heavily toward Belgian and Dutch brews. Late on weekends, the name, which means "crazy," stops being ironic and starts being a warning.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar named for a South American and New Zealand fruit that shows up in some of the drinks, Feijoa sits at the busy corner of Vijzelstraat and Reguliersdwarsstraat. The short menu skews sweet, fruity, and creamy, but the bartenders are happiest going off-script, especially on classics. The tell: neighboring bar staff fill the stools before and after their own shifts, which is as reliable a signal as any that the team here knows how to pour.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A burger joint on Albert Cuypstraat that is also, for those who know to ask, a cocktail bar tucked behind it. The setup borrows a page from New York's speakeasy playbook: order a burger if you like, but the actual point is a well-made drink somewhere that most passersby will never find. The kind of place that rewards the mildly curious and inconveniences nobody else.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Two glowing Corian bars shaped like river stones face each other across the lobby divide of the Grand Sofitel, which sets the tone for what this cocktail bar is going for. Champagne flights, oysters from a raw bar, and well-made cocktails draw a dressed-up crowd. It skews designer and upmarket, so dress accordingly and order accordingly. If you want a brown bar, Amsterdam has better ones a short walk away.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Cactus plants crowd the bar top and provocative art covers the walls, which is about right for a cocktail lounge named after Charles Bukowski. Henry's is the sleeker half of a two-bar operation on Oosterpark, with the adjoining Bar Bukowski leaning more literary dive. At Henry's, the mood runs loud and loose, the crowd skews hip, and the drinks are the point. A good spot to start the night before you forget what you ordered.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The barrels lining the walls here aren't decorative, they hold the jenever and liqueurs you're about to drink. An old-school Dutch proeflokaal, or tasting house, this one has been around forever on a quiet lane just off the Dam, its dark wood interior feeling less like preservation and more like nothing ever needed changing. Order a traditional pour and stand at the bar the way generations of Amsterdammers have, without overthinking it.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

A ceiling of hanging crystal glass catches the light on the tenth floor of the WestCord Fashion Hotel, which is either dramatic or a lot, depending on your mood. This cocktail bar sits near the A10 ring road, a tram ride from the center, though the more honest draw is that Schiphol is ten minutes away. Black club-style decor and panoramic city views give it a sleek, transit-lounge-with-ambition feel.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The building used to be something official and grand, and the hotel inside it leans into that with a cocktail bar done in stark black and glass that shouldn't work but does. A row of plush booth seats faces a communal high table that looks like a fish tank scaled for people, drawing an even split of fashion industry types and people on expenses. Tunes Bar is the kind of place where the architecture does half the work, and nobody minds.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Copper chain curtains hang between the bar and the canal that runs directly beneath it, which tells you a lot about Hotel De l'Europe's priorities. Freddie's is a classic hotel bar: panelled walls, leather banquettes, and a warm pink-orange glow overhead. It's named for Alfred Heineken, who apparently used to hold court here among friends. Anyone can walk in, and people do, but the room very much dresses up.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The building used to be a jenever distillery's tasting house, and the shift from spirits to beer hasn't made it any less serious about drinking. This old-school Amsterdam beer bar carries over 200 bottles and seventeen taps, leaning heavily on Belgian and Dutch brews, with Trappist beers as a particular obsession. It is unpretentious in the way that places are when they have nothing to prove, which around here is a compliment.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3 stars · Difford's Guide

A brown café so undesigned it loops back around to charming, De Pilsner sits on a narrow Begijnensteeg alley and operates on a simple principle: beer on draught, beer in bottles, or genever, and ideally all three in sequence. Regulars call it De Engelse Reet, which translates politely as The English Backside, a nickname the place wears with no apparent shame. There's no DJ, no aesthetic, no concept. Just the low hum of people actually talking to each other.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A firehose is bolted across the doorway for reasons nobody seems compelled to explain, which sets the tone nicely for this low-lit, no-fuss Belgian beer bar on Overtoom. Bare floorboards, utilitarian furniture, and red-shaded candles flickering on every table. The range of specialist Belgian and foreign drafts and bottles is the whole point, and regulars tend to treat the menu less like a list and more like a project.

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

A one-room tasting house tucked near Central Station, De Ooievaar pours genevers and liqueurs from the distillery that shares its name and has been around forever. The shelves do the decorating, the room fits maybe a dozen people comfortably, and the whole point is standing at the bar with a small glass of something Dutch and slightly medicinal-tasting. It sits on a corner, conveniently on the walking route that politely gets described as "toward the Red Light district."

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide 3.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

A cocktail bar on Mauritskade where the menu is organized around themes like perfume and medicinal bitters, which sounds fussy until you're actually holding the drink. The room leans into a Golden Age mood, with jazz setting the pace and no apparent interest in hurrying you along. Difford's Guide has noted it. Come with the kind of curiosity that makes you read a menu twice before ordering.

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide

1. Difford's Guide Difford's Guide