What to Eat in Amsterdam

Nobody comes to Amsterdam for the food, and then they eat a warm stroopwafel off a market griddle and change their mind. Dutch food is not fancy, it is fried, cheesy, sweet and made for eating with your hands or with a beer, and the city adds some of the best Indonesian cooking in Europe on top. This is our plain rundown of what to eat in Amsterdam, the classics to order and the exact places to find them, from VayCay Couple, who have grazed the Netherlands capital more than once. Euro prices below were right in September 2026.

Is Dutch food actually good?

It depends what you want. Traditional Dutch food is simple, hearty and snacky rather than refined, built for a cold, seafaring country, so it leans on cheese, potatoes, fish and deep-fried bar bites. What lifts Amsterdam food well above that is history, the old spice trade and Indonesian ties give the city a second cuisine of rice tables and sambal that is worth a night on its own. The Netherlands grew rich on the spice trade in the 1600s, and that history still shapes the plate, with nutmeg in the meatballs and an Indonesian kitchen on half the corners. Eat the Dutch snacks off the markets and stalls by day, book an Indonesian rijsttafel for one proper sit-down dinner, and you have the best food in Amsterdam sorted.

The Dutch classics to order

Here is what we actually eat, and the dishes that make the trip. None of it costs much.

• Dutch cheese, aged Gouda in particular, sold by the wedge and best tasted at an old cheese room. Dutch cheese ranges from young and mild to a crumbly, salty extra-aged that we take home in a vacuum pack.
• Stroopwafel, two thin waffles glued with warm caramel syrup, pressed fresh so the middle is still soft. A market stroopwafel beats the boxed supermarket kind by a mile.
• Haring, raw Hollandse Nieuwe herring, served with onion and pickles or in a soft broodje. Tip your head back and eat it whole like a local, or take the sandwich if that is a step too far.
• Bitterballen, deep-fried balls of beef ragout with a crisp crumb, served hot with mustard and a beer. Bitterballen are the national bar snack and the thing we order first in any brown cafe.
• Patat, thick Dutch fries in a paper cone, best with mayo or oorlog, the loaded version with satay sauce, mayo and raw onion.
• Kroket and the FEBO wall, a crumbed ragout roll you can literally buy from a coin-operated hatch in the wall, the strangest and most Dutch fast food there is.
• Poffertjes, tiny fluffy pancakes under a snowfall of icing sugar, and appeltaart, the tall, cinnamon-heavy Dutch apple pie, both pudding staples.
• Rijsttafel, the Indonesian rice table, a spread of a dozen or more small spiced dishes shared around rice, and the one meal to sit down for.

Cheese, the Dutch obsession

Dutch cheese deserves more than a wedge grabbed at the airport. The big names are Gouda and Edam, sold by age, jong for young and mild, belegen for a firmer middle, and oud for the crumbly, salty, almost caramel version we love. Look too for cumin-studded gouda. The old canal-side cheese warehouses now run tastings, and the Reypenaer Tasting Room on Singel is the easy one to book, walking you through young, aged and everything between with wine or port. For buying, the market stalls beat the tourist shops on price.

The sweet stuff

The stroopwafel is the star, invented in Gouda in the 1800s as a way to use bakery scraps and now sold hot off griddles across the city. Beyond it, poffertjes are the little sugar-dusted pancakes, appeltaart is the tall cinnamon apple pie, best at Winkel 43 by the Noordermarkt with a mound of cream, and tompouce is the bright pink cream slice in every bakery window. Around New Year the stalls switch to oliebollen, deep-fried dough balls rolled in sugar.

Where to eat it in Amsterdam

These are the spots we send people to, all central. The patat queue at Vleminckx is worth it, and for more on the city’s obsession with fries we wrote that up on its own. Book Restaurant Blauw ahead for the rijsttafel.

Amsterdam’s food markets

For grazing in one place, the markets do the job. Albert Cuyp Market in De Pijp is the big daily street market, Monday to Saturday, where we buy stroopwafels off the griddle, cones of hot kibbeling battered fish, and cheese by the wedge. The official Albert Cuyp Markt site lists the stalls and days. For a rainy afternoon, the Foodhallen in Oud-West is an indoor hall of food stands under one roof, bitterballen, dim sum, pizza and more, good with a group who cannot agree.

The Indonesian side of Amsterdam

Amsterdam’s best sit-down meal is often not Dutch at all. Centuries of ties with Indonesia left the city full of Indonesian restaurants, and the rijsttafel, or rice table, is how to try them. You get a dozen or more small dishes, satay skewers, rendang, sambal, fried tempeh and pickles, spread around rice to share. It is the one dinner we always book, and Restaurant Blauw on Amstelveenseweg is our regular, at around 40 to 55 euros a head with drinks.

What to drink with it

Two things to try beyond the obvious beer. Jenever is the juniper spirit that gave gin its name, served cold in a little tulip glass poured right to the rim, so the first sip is taken bending over the bar. In an old tasting house, or proeflokaal, it comes with a bitterbal or two. And Dutch coffee culture is strong, so a koffie verkeerd, the local milky coffee, with a slice of appeltaart is the classic mid-afternoon stop.

Graze the markets by day, sit down for one rijsttafel, and do not skip the warm stroopwafel. For the rest of a city break, the Amsterdam guide and the official I amsterdam site round it out. Eet smakelijk.

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