The 75 Best Places to Drink in the Netherlands

A neon-lit cocktail bar inside a 17th-century Dutch canal house, which is a combination that shouldn't work as well as it does. The team behind Dandelyan and Lyaness runs this Amsterdam outpost, and the inventive drinks carry the same reputation. A second room next door runs quieter and looser, more living room than bar, if you need somewhere to land between rounds. Europe's 50 Best Bars has it at number 42.

You ring a doorbell on Reguliersdwarsstraat and hope someone answers, which is already a better start to a cocktail bar than most. Inside, Door 74 does the Prohibition speakeasy thing with dark wood and antique barware that stops just short of costume party. The menu leans into bold, complex flavors without abandoning approachable drinks, and the bartenders will steer you right if you let them.

A working craft brewery tucked inside a genuine Amsterdam windmill on the IJ waterfront, with an emu on the logo because in Dutch "IJ" sounds like "egg," and Dutch brewers commit to the bit. The taproom is small and a little scruffy, dusty bottles lining the tiled walls in a way that feels honestly lived-in rather than designed to look that way. Come for the strong, hop-forward house ales poured straight from the source.

A canal-side bar on Kloveniersburgwal with what is claimed to be the largest genever selection in the Netherlands, Rosalia's Menagerie sits in De Wallen inside a former inn and takes Dutch spirits seriously enough to feel like a minor institution. The bartenders use genever as a proper cocktail spirit rather than a novelty, which shifts the whole experience. Pull up a stool, order something you've never heard of, and watch the canal do nothing in particular.

Henrique Sá Pessoa, the Portuguese chef with a following back home, runs set menus here that pull Portuguese home cooking toward something more cosmopolitan, with the occasional East Asian lean. The portions stay generous even when the plating gets precise. Bespoke cocktails and a cool bar make the lunch crowd feel like they've found something. Set-menu restaurant, the kind where you dress up just enough to feel good about it.

The basement of Hotel New York turns out to be one of the more atmospheric dining rooms in Rotterdam, fitted out like a jazz-age Manhattan club and anchored by an eleven-meter bar that earns its keep. It's a modern cuisine restaurant with French leanings, but the kitchen moves comfortably between beurre blanc and yuzu without making a fuss about it. The oyster bar pulls in its own crowd. Dress like you mean it.

Shelves lined with tequila and mezcal set the tone at Botanero, a Mexican-leaning cantina bar in central Rotterdam. The cocktail list leans on classics, and Dutch spirits sneak in alongside the Latin American lineup. Snacks pull from South American traditions with a Dutch edge, and there are tacos if you need something to anchor the mezcal. Bright, casual, and easy to drop into at almost any hour.

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.

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.

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.

Café de Klepel is a canal-side brown-café type on a street with several near-twins, so if the sidewalk tables are gone when the sun comes out, a backup is a few steps away. It takes the usual bar snacks a notch up, with a beer list that goes past the pilsner and sparkling wine that isn't just prosecco or cava. Good for solo celebrating, since the anchovies don't require a feast to justify showing up.

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.

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.

A cocktail bar in the basement plays vinyl while you're still deciding whether to do the short or long tasting menu upstairs, which sets the tone nicely. CUE holds a Michelin star, and the chef builds each course from three or four elements, leaning on the grill, fermentation, and a Nordic restraint that keeps things precise without feeling clinical. The sommelier leans toward natural wines and earns the pairing fee.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.