Restaurants in Amsterdam

Ensconced in a Golden Age canal house, Lastage is a small boutique-style ‘New French’ restaurant with impeccable service. Fresh, seasonal ingredients are the basis for their regularly changing multiple-choice menus and they make amuse-bouches to your taste. Chef Rogier van Dan subtly infuses Mediterranean elements into dishes grounded in traditional Dutch cuisine. The excellent sommelier will guide you through the voluminous wine list.

Dutch regional cuisine is the strong suit at this intimate, candlelit restaurant, housed in two beautifully restored 17th-century townhouses near Centraal Station. As you sit around the sturdy oak tables beneath chandeliers and rustic roof beams, you can just imagine the original occupants of the locale digging into such items as baked black pudding with roasted scallops or smoked eel from Volendam with pumpkin crème.

Attached to the Hotel d’Europe, this casually elegant café-restaurant is a point of reference for Amsterdammers. The bright, airy hall sports two levels: a spacious café with chill-out tables below and the proper restaurant above. Both levels open on canal-side terraces. The menu is a global melange, with an emphasis on natural, organic ingredients, and there’s a substantial vegetarian selection.

Once a soup kitchen for the poor, this basic, old-fashioned establishment now serves huge platefuls of cheap, no-frills Dutch fare to workers and tourists alike, all seated at communal tables. Visitors should expect traditional staples, such as stamppot (a meaty stew) and paling (smoked eel). The three-course dagmenu (soup, main course and dessert) is a good deal.