Eat Like You Live Here

• Bitterballen — crisp-fried balls of beef ragout, served with mustard. The default bar snack, and the thing to order with your first beer.
• Haring — cured raw herring, at its best as Hollandse Nieuwe between June and September. Served chopped on a tray with onion and pickle, or in a soft white bun. About €3.50–4, or €5.50 on a bun. The tail-first, head-back method is real but mostly performed for tourists; nobody minds if you use the toothpick.
• Kibbeling — battered fried cod from the same stalls.
• Stamppot and erwtensoep — mash-and-sausage and thick pea soup. Winter food, and very good winter food.
• Poffertjes and stroopwafels — mini pancakes, and two thin waffles glued with syrup. Buy stroopwafels warm off the iron at a market, not boxed.
• Appelgebak — deep, cinnamon-heavy apple pie with cream. A serious Dutch institution.
• Cheese — the ages are what matter: jong (4 weeks, mild), belegen (16–28 weeks, the sandwich sweet spot), oud (10–12 months, caramelly, crunchy with crystals), overjarige (18 months plus). Gouda is over half of all Dutch production; Edam has the red wax and less fat.

Indonesia was a Dutch colony until 1949, and Indonesian food is now central to how Amsterdam eats. The rijsttafel — “rice table” — is not a dish but a way of eating: many small dishes at once, up to forty of them, with rice. It is worth knowing that it is a Dutch colonial invention rather than an Indonesian tradition, devised to display the archipelago's cooking to colonial officials. It remains the Dutch celebration meal, and it is delicious. Both things are true.

Bruin cafés take their name from walls stained brown by three centuries of tobacco. Small, wood-panelled, rugs on the tables, no music to speak of, beer and jenever and a plate of bitterballen.

• Café Hoppe, Spui 18 — founded 1670, and one of the oldest cafés in the city.
• Café 't Smalle, Egelantiersgracht 12 — Jordaan, in Pieter Hoppe's 1780 distillery building, though the café itself opened in 1978. Still the best waterside terrace in Amsterdam.
• Café Chris, Bloemstraat 42 — the tourist board dates it to 1624 and calls it the oldest café in the Jordaan.

Jenever is gin's ancestor — malt wine distilled with juniper, closer to a light whisky than to modern gin. The ritual to know is the kopstootje, the “little head-butt”: a tulip glass filled to the absolute brim, served with a beer alongside. You do not pick the glass up. You bend down to the bar and take the first sip hands-free. Only then do you lift it.

Drink it at Wynand Fockink, Pijlsteeg 31, a tasting room in an alley behind Dam Square, distilling since 1679 and largely unchanged since the seventeenth century.

KLM's own city guide names these plainly: Leidseplein, Rembrandtplein, Dam Square, and above all Lange and Korte Leidsedwarsstraat — the restaurant strip off Leidseplein where the menu-wavers stand. The Damrak between Centraal and Dam runs on the same model. The tells are universal: photo menus in six languages, someone at the door, and prime footfall.

• Restaurant Blauw — Oud-Zuid, Amstelveenseweg 158 — the rijsttafel, done properly. Ordered per two people, with a full vegetarian version.
• Moeders — Jordaan, Rozengracht 251 — traditional Dutch home cooking in a room covered floor to ceiling in photographs of customers' mothers. Only 36 seats and reservations only through their website. Kitchen 17:00–22:00.
• Frens Haringhandel — Koningsplein — a herring stall, daily 11:00–17:00, and the cheapest good thing you'll eat here.
• Café 't Smalle — Jordaan — for bitterballen by the water.
• Winkel 43 — Noordermarkt 43 — the apple pie. Go on a Monday when the Noordermarkt is on.

Cash or card? The “Netherlands is cashless” line is overstated — the central bank found only 4% of retailers are card-only. The real risk runs the other way: Dutch terminals have historically been fussy about foreign credit cards, and merchants strongly prefer debit. Carry a debit card, keep some cash, and expect card-only at car parks and some pharmacies.

Tipping: optional. Staff are on a proper wage. Round up, or 5–10% if the meal was good.