Dutch food and Amsterdam restaurants are the butt of a lot of jokes—only some of them deserved. The city’s cafes are better than its eateries, the saying goes. And the truth is, Amsterdam’s more than 1,400 cafes and bars—among the most atmospherically smoky, friendly, cozy, pleasantly worn in the world—are a hard act to follow.
Also true is that a lot of traditional Dutch food is heavy, consisting of meat and vegetable stews, sausages, potatoes and gravy, and plenty of bland cheese. Unlike Italians or French, locals dining out here avoid local food, favoring Indonesian, French, Italian, Asian, and other foreign specialties (there are 145 nationalities in town) or fusion mergers thereof.
In the last 15 years, though, the once-dreary restaurant scene has become surprisingly dynamic, roller-coastering from the sublime to the ridiculous. You really can get a good meal here at a variety of both international and homegrown restaurants—but you can also spend a lot of money on bad, silly, or contrived food. Still, it’s nonsense to claim, as do other Europeans (the French in particular), that there is no such thing as “Dutch cuisine.”
Veteran food guru Johannes van Dam has a collection of centuries-old Dutch cookbooks describing dishes that would send a modern French chef to culinary heaven. Members of the Dutch Regional Cuisine organization (Neerlands Dis) are reviving lost recipes, ingredients, wines, liquors, and cooking techniques from the various regions of the Netherlands.
Dozens of flavorful finds include dishes like smoke-dried nagelhout beef, braised codfish with mustard sauce, and marrowfat peas with onions, bacon, and pickles. The real dynamism lies, however, with several dozen chefs—Dutch, French, and Indonesian—producing dishes at hip Amsterdam restaurants that would fit right into the foodie scene in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Sydney. For these chefs, variations on northern Italian, French, and Asian themes—sometimes mixed and matched—are all the rage.
Handled by skilled practitioners, these variations can be world-class. Fusion remains the trend of the early 21st century; sometimes the results are more confused than anything else. And be warned: Service is almost universally slow and often sloppy. Everyone knows that Amsterdam’s restaurants, with few exceptions, are “understaffed with overpaid amateurs.”
Fish, fish, and more fish. The staggering wealth of the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age was based in large part on herrings.
The Dutch eat them raw and pickled in a variety of ways. Try them at one of the dozens of herring stands (herringhuis) scattered around town. Other Atlantic and North Sea fish areon many menus, and they’re generally fresh and delicious. Among snack foods, osseworst is a delicious smoked beef sausage eaten cold, like salami. The beef or shrimp croquette (krokette) is a local obsession. At their worst, these large, gooey dumplings rolled in diamond-hard crumbs, then deep fried, taste like instant gravy mix. They’re always served scorching hot; Amsterdammers split them open, place them on a slice of white bread, then add mustard and/or fried parsley. Small, round vegetable-paste croquettes are called bitterballen and are a favorite hors d’oeuvre.
Locally you can find dozens of cheeses, including the ubiquitous Edam and Gouda. You can also find delicious aged varieties, and others made with raw milk (boerenkaas), hidden treasures that aren’t available abroad. These cheeses, plus various cold cuts, go into the standard Dutch lunch, which consists of small, often round sandwiches—broodjes—that would be considered a mere snack or finger food in most other countries.
The most celebrated dish hereabouts is stamppot, a vast mound of mashed potatoes and gravy, usually served with endive, sauerkraut, or kale, plus pork ribs and sausages. Don’t forget erwtensoep, pea soup, that perennial winter favorite; it should be thick enough to hold a spoon upright.
Also true is that a lot of traditional Dutch food is heavy, consisting of meat and vegetable stews, sausages, potatoes and gravy, and plenty of bland cheese. Unlike Italians or French, locals dining out here avoid local food, favoring Indonesian, French, Italian, Asian, and other foreign specialties (there are 145 nationalities in town) or fusion mergers thereof.
In the last 15 years, though, the once-dreary restaurant scene has become surprisingly dynamic, roller-coastering from the sublime to the ridiculous. You really can get a good meal here at a variety of both international and homegrown restaurants—but you can also spend a lot of money on bad, silly, or contrived food. Still, it’s nonsense to claim, as do other Europeans (the French in particular), that there is no such thing as “Dutch cuisine.”
Veteran food guru Johannes van Dam has a collection of centuries-old Dutch cookbooks describing dishes that would send a modern French chef to culinary heaven. Members of the Dutch Regional Cuisine organization (Neerlands Dis) are reviving lost recipes, ingredients, wines, liquors, and cooking techniques from the various regions of the Netherlands.
Dozens of flavorful finds include dishes like smoke-dried nagelhout beef, braised codfish with mustard sauce, and marrowfat peas with onions, bacon, and pickles. The real dynamism lies, however, with several dozen chefs—Dutch, French, and Indonesian—producing dishes at hip Amsterdam restaurants that would fit right into the foodie scene in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Sydney. For these chefs, variations on northern Italian, French, and Asian themes—sometimes mixed and matched—are all the rage.
Handled by skilled practitioners, these variations can be world-class. Fusion remains the trend of the early 21st century; sometimes the results are more confused than anything else. And be warned: Service is almost universally slow and often sloppy. Everyone knows that Amsterdam’s restaurants, with few exceptions, are “understaffed with overpaid amateurs.”
Fish, fish, and more fish. The staggering wealth of the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age was based in large part on herrings.
The Dutch eat them raw and pickled in a variety of ways. Try them at one of the dozens of herring stands (herringhuis) scattered around town. Other Atlantic and North Sea fish areon many menus, and they’re generally fresh and delicious. Among snack foods, osseworst is a delicious smoked beef sausage eaten cold, like salami. The beef or shrimp croquette (krokette) is a local obsession. At their worst, these large, gooey dumplings rolled in diamond-hard crumbs, then deep fried, taste like instant gravy mix. They’re always served scorching hot; Amsterdammers split them open, place them on a slice of white bread, then add mustard and/or fried parsley. Small, round vegetable-paste croquettes are called bitterballen and are a favorite hors d’oeuvre.
Locally you can find dozens of cheeses, including the ubiquitous Edam and Gouda. You can also find delicious aged varieties, and others made with raw milk (boerenkaas), hidden treasures that aren’t available abroad. These cheeses, plus various cold cuts, go into the standard Dutch lunch, which consists of small, often round sandwiches—broodjes—that would be considered a mere snack or finger food in most other countries.
The most celebrated dish hereabouts is stamppot, a vast mound of mashed potatoes and gravy, usually served with endive, sauerkraut, or kale, plus pork ribs and sausages. Don’t forget erwtensoep, pea soup, that perennial winter favorite; it should be thick enough to hold a spoon upright.
