The Best Places to Eat and Stay in Amsterdam

A 23-floor tower standing over the low-rise rooftops of De Pijp, Hotel Okura Amsterdam is a full-service hotel that is Japanese not just in name but in feel, from the calming minimalism of the lobby to service that runs with quiet precision. Rooms lean international, but the house restaurants tilt heavily Japanese, and the Nagomi Spa rounds things out. A useful base for one of Amsterdam's liveliest neighborhoods.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A renovated 18th-century townhouse near Leidseplein that operates as a chic boutique hotel without pretending the old bones aren't still there. Rooms are small but uncluttered, and the irregular floor plans mean some face a quiet street, others a private garden. The bar runs from breakfast through last call. Bicycles are available, which in Amsterdam is less an amenity than a survival strategy.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The old Sweelinck Conservatorium building, with its double-height ceilings and century-old bones, turns out to make a genuinely good luxury hotel, which was probably not the architects' original intention. Split-level loft suites occupy what were once classrooms, Piero Lissoni handled the interiors with characteristic restraint, and the Museumplein address puts you steps from the P.C. Hooftstraat if restraint isn't your thing.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A pool table beside the fireplace in Bar Claes sets the tone for this Michelin Selected hotel, an old-school Amsterdam institution refreshed with bold colors and curvaceous furniture that somehow avoids looking like a design hotel trying too hard. Rooms run cozy by necessity, as Amsterdam always has, but suites spread out properly and some catch canal views. The Rijksmuseum is a short walk away, which means the neighborhood does a lot of the heavy lifting.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A Portuguese hotel chain moved into a pair of Neo-Renaissance buildings that once served as a town hall and archive, and the grand lobby with its coffered ceilings and soaring archways still reads more museum than check-in desk. Rooms are sleek and minimalist, some with Amstel River views, and a few top-floor suites tuck skylights up under the eaves. The indoor pool, glass-enclosed cocktail bar, and atrium restaurant round out a hotel that feels unusually spacious for Amsterdam.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A row of 19th-century Amsterdam canal houses, beautifully restored, doing their best impression of a very expensive cloud. This boutique hotel sits just outside the city center with Vondelpark a short walk away, and the rooms lean hard into velvet, soft palettes, and enveloping textures. The Living lounge runs around the clock, which is convenient given how enthusiastically this place encourages sleeping in.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Song lyrics are etched into the mirrors, a Crosley turntable sits in every room, and there's an electric guitar waiting in case inspiration strikes at 2am. This boutique hotel occupies eight floors of the A'DAM Tower across the water from Central Station, with views that remind you Amsterdam is almost entirely flat. The crowd skews creative and the building houses a nightclub downstairs, so quiet is not the brand promise.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Check-in happens on a leather sofa by a fireplace, which tells you most of what you need to know about this boutique hotel's approach. The building was once a diamond factory, and the enormous windows it left behind flood guest rooms with the kind of light its original tenants required. Persian rugs, quirky art, and contemporary Dutch furniture fill the common spaces. De Pijp, one of Amsterdam's most densely good neighborhoods, is right outside.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The spiraling staircase is a feature, not a flaw, at this 17th-century canal house hotel on the Keizersgracht, though anyone who packed heavy may beg to differ. Designer Wim van de Oudeweetering layered it in bold color, lush fabric, and theatrical pattern, so the whole place reads baroque without quite being baroque. Rooms lean cozy by default, heritage floorplans being what they are, but the deluxes and suites open up, and some look straight onto the canal.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The former headquarters of Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, this design hotel on the Amstel has kept the building's open concrete bones and filled them with newsprint murals, raw finishes, and nine guest-designer rooms that range from treehouse to cinema boudoir. Standard rooms are compact and clever. The rooftop bar Canvas turns into a dance floor on weekends, the basement cocktail bar doesn't open until 1am, and the hot tubs up top have views worth lingering over.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The kitchen table, not the bed, is the organizing piece of furniture in Zoku's lofts, which tells you everything about what kind of hotel this is. Sliding screens separate the sleeping loft from a fully stocked kitchen and a proper workspace, right down to scissors and spare pencils. The communal floors add a bar, open kitchen, and shared work areas for when the deadline doesn't care that you're in Amsterdam.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Natural wine posters cover the walls at this creative restaurant on Wibautstraat, where the color scheme is bold enough to count as a statement. The menu leans into unexpected pairings, Greek and Dutch sensibilities quietly colliding on the plate. A spacious terrace out front draws the Oost crowd when the weather cooperates. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand, which tracks for a place that pulls off ambitious cooking without the stiff-backed room to match.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A king bed that spans wall to wall is the whole room, more or less, but citizenM makes compact feel considered rather than apologetic. This design-forward budget hotel in Amsterdam Zuid keeps things sharp, with Smart TVs, climate control, and electronic blinds all run from a bedside iPad. The lobby bar does quick meals when you need them. You're here to sleep efficiently and be out the door early, and the hotel is entirely at peace with that.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The corner building in De Pijp has been many locals' canteen for as long as anyone can remember, its walls covered in art and its atmosphere firmly set to low-key. It's a neighborhood restaurant running Italian-leaning food with Dutch instincts: farm-sourced ingredients, wood-fire smoke, and the kind of creative combination that doesn't bother naming its own genre. The Michelin Guide awards it a Bib Gourmand, and the regulars act like they already knew.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Round windows and a pavement terrace anchor this all-day Mediterranean casual in Amsterdam's Oud-West, where the Zen interior carries a lingering 1970s warmth. The cooking runs in the spirit of Yotam Ottolenghi: vegetable-forward, boldly spiced, generous with texture. Meat eaters and vegans both find plenty to work with, and the prices stay genuinely modest. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, which tracks.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A converted tram depot in Oud-West, where the soaring central corridor is wide enough that you can still picture a tram rolling through it. This boutique hotel keeps the bones of the building, exposed brick and steel and concrete, and softens the edges with eco-friendly beds and art from the owner's personal collection. The Jordaan's shops and restaurants are a short walk away, with the museum district not much further.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The building's architects were told to maximize the top floors for views and the bottom floors for street life, then essentially minimize everything between, which is how Amsterdam ended up with one of its more quietly dramatic waterfront shapes. Inside the twenty-five room hotel, raw concrete ceilings meet floor-to-ceiling windows and a white-on-white palette warmed by parquet and contemporary art. Junior suites add freestanding tubs for anyone who came to stare at the IJ.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Rem Koolhaas's OMA designed this hotel as three stacked triangular volumes, each rotated slightly off the last, so it looks like a building that got bored and started improvising. Inside, the 650 rooms go full boutique riot, all color and attitude, which is the nhow signature move. A rooftop bar and a ground-floor restaurant cover both ends of the day, and three small gyms are there for the optimists. It sits next to Amsterdam's main convention center, which explains a lot about the lobby energy.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A floating Cantonese restaurant moored just outside Centraal Station, Sea Palace looks like a Ming dynasty palace ran aground on an Amsterdam canal and decided to stay. Pagoda rooflines, carved chinoiserie, and statues of Chinese warlords fill every corner. The family has run it forever, the Bib Gourmand is theirs, and the dim sum and Peking duck keep the regulars coming back while service robots weave between the tables.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

Bread dough gets kneaded at one end of the room while the open kitchen hums at the other, and somehow it all feels like one coherent idea. This bakery café in Amsterdam's Move building has wooden tables, soft benches, and the kind of unhurried warmth that makes a two-hour lunch feel reasonable. The French-leaning menu picks up global detours along the way. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A former fisherman's inn on the Durgerdam dike, a fifteen-minute drive from central Amsterdam but feeling much farther, this 14-room boutique hotel trades canal-house crowds for clapboard quiet on the water. The design studio Buro Belen kept the maritime bones and layered in contemporary art and unique architectural details room by room. Electric bikes are on loan for day trips, and the in-house restaurant handles dinner if you make it back.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Rooms here are acoustically tuned and fitted with audiophile-grade sound systems, which gives you a sense of the hotel's priorities from the moment you check in. Jaz in the City is a mid-to-large modern hotel that leans into street art and industrial-chic design rather than the obligatory watercolor prints. The Ziggo Dome is next door and the Ajax stadium is a short walk, so the neighborhood self-selects for people who came to do something.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The large yellow-domed oven is visible from anywhere in the room, which is sort of the point. This Neapolitan pizza spot on a quiet Amsterdam street runs two addresses side by side, one for dine-in, one purely for takeout. The menu has nine pizzas and no filler; the dough is the whole argument, airy and light with a crust that actually melts. Ranked in the 50 Top Pizza Europe and World lists, and booking ahead is advised.

1. 50 Top Pizza #47 · 50 Top Pizza World
2. 50 Top Pizza #7 · 50 Top Pizza Europe

The grid of square windows that makes up the facade is very slightly crooked, like blocks stacked by a child, which turns out to be a decent metaphor for the whole hotel. CitizenM is an airport hotel that wants to be your friend, a budget-minded design property with king beds, rain showers, glass bathroom pods, and in-room iPads that remember your lighting preferences. A canteen runs 24 hours, and central Amsterdam is a 20-minute train ride away.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

The atrium alone makes a case for the airport hotel's revival: it soars above the Axis cocktail bar and a lobby that doesn't feel like a waiting room. Connected directly to Schiphol's terminal, this Hilton leans into modernist architecture and rooms styled for travelers who notice these things. The Bowery Restaurant blends Asian cooking with Dutch touches, which is more interesting than it sounds. A Michelin Selected Hotel, and a reasonable argument for skipping the city entirely.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Prints from the south of France cover the walls, and the chef's jazz records play low enough that you can actually hold a conversation, at least if you snag a table toward the front. This neighborhood bistro in De Pijp runs a monthly changing set menu built around the familiar flavors of Provence, done with a lighter, neo-bistro hand. Beef cheeks braised in red wine, rice pudding rethought: comfort food that doesn't announce itself.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A warehouse on the IJ River waterfront, third floor, ring the bell after dark. Once you're up, the view stretches wide and the room has that pleasingly unfinished quality that Amsterdam does so well. The kitchen runs a farm-to-table menu built around local and seasonal sourcing, where a carrot gets the same attention as whatever fish came in that morning. The cooking has a confident, improvisational feel, the kind that makes a beet sauce seem inevitable.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Tucked into a quiet side street, Beulings is a small contemporary restaurant where one half of the team cooks solo in an open kitchen while the other works the room with genuine warmth and sharp wine pairings. The set menu draws on French technique and Cantonese instincts in combinations that feel considered rather than showy. Bring someone you like talking to, because the room is close and the evening moves at its own pace.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Dried leaves hang from the ceiling at this lively Amstelveen bistro, which somehow reads more Provençal than Dutch. Grab a seat at the long bar and order from a compact à la carte of French classics in smaller portions, with the occasional Asian detour keeping things from feeling too predictable. The steak tartare hand-cut, the crab remoulade with crispy toast, the kind of menu where you know what you're getting and that's entirely the point.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Tables pushed close together and a menu that leans hard on vegetables, this vintage bistro in Amsterdam's Haarlemmerbuurt keeps things quietly confident. The chef works with a short list of components and coaxes a lot of depth out of them, the kind of cooking that makes simplicity look like a choice. A broad European wine list rounds it out, priced the way neighborhood places used to be before neighborhoods got complicated.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Flavio's modern Italian bistro sits right on the Noordermarkt, where the Jordaan's market-day energy drifts straight through the door. Seasonal dishes lean into genuine Italian generosity, the kind where octopus arrives with properly crisped skin alongside bold peppers and broccoletti. The terrace fills fast on sunny afternoons, and the bar inside is rarely quiet. The French and Italian wine list is worth lingering over.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The dining room of a converted courthouse, set inside the Rosewood hotel, where Dutch artworks hang against walls that were clearly designed to impress someone in robes. Eeuwen is a contemporary French restaurant that leans into Dutch produce, pairing it with the occasional sharp, exotic seasoning that keeps things from getting too stately. The courtyard terrace, when the Amsterdam weather cooperates, is the kind of thing you'd photograph before you eat.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A French bistro feel in a canal-side Amsterdam spot where the menu changes with whatever the market threw up that morning. The kitchen leans into fusion, so the food moves around, though the mood stays reliably loose and convivial. Tables fill fast with regulars who know to book ahead, and the chicken liver mousse with brioche and pickled cauliflower has become something of a calling card for the kitchen's style.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A glass pavilion perched beside the Nieuwe Meer marina, where the water does half the decorating. This is a French brasserie with ambitions, the kind of place that puts steak tartare and lobster on the same menu as thoughtful vegetarian plates, and somehow makes it feel coherent rather than conflicted. The terrace is the obvious move when the weather cooperates. Inside or out, the cooking leans classic with quiet modern detours.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The port and Portuguese wine list at this cosy neighbourhood bistro in Amsterdam Noord hints at where the chef's heart is, though the kitchen roams further than that. Mediterranean flavours pick up Portuguese and global detours along the way, landing somewhere rich and occasionally playful. The kind of place locals quietly hope nobody else discovers, which is, of course, already too late.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Cowbells in the bathroom set the tone early at this Savoyard dining room in De Pijp, where the chef runs a cosy, chalet-inflected operation with his wife that goes considerably deeper than fondue. The cooking pulls from the Alps but bends toward the creative, with aged fish, miso, and a cheese trolley that genuinely earns the table real estate it demands. The wine list has a few pleasant surprises tucked in, too.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

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

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. 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

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

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. Eater The 23 Best Restaurants 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

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

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

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