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Eat Mode
This smart little fusion diner covers the Pacific Rim in style. Order, take your number and plop down at a New Age marbled-wood table while they whip up your seaweed salad, California spring rolls or Thai tom yam goong soup. Does a booming takeaway trade too.
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Envy
This hip, sleek restaurant encourages diners to take a five-course menu of seemingly endless, top-notch tasters. The designer globes are there to light up the media stars here most weekends.
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Fifteen
'Naked chef' Jamie Oliver has brought to Amsterdam a concept he began in London: take 15 young people from underprivileged backgrounds and train them for a year in the restaurant biz. Results: noble intention, sometimes spotty execution. The setting, however, is beyond question: Fifteen faces the IJ, and the busy, open-kitchen space is city-cool, with graffitied walls and exposed wood beams.
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Foodism
A hip, colourful little joint run by a fun, relaxed crew. All-day breakfasts and sandwiches like chicken, mango and salad make up the day menu, while night-time sees patrons tucking into platefuls of pasta - try the 'Kung Funghi' (with three kinds of mushrooms, parsley, walnuts and cream).
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Gare De L'est
Gare de l'Est has both the smallest menu in Amsterdam and also the largest. They say that because four chefs (from traditions including North African, Mediterranean and Asian) take turns nightly in the kitchen, and what their course menus lack in length they make up for in variety over the course of a year. Portuguese tiles and glowing Middle Eastern lamps adorn the interior, and courtyard seating exudes good vibes.
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Gary's Muffins
This long-standing bakery serves fresh bagels, chocolate brownies from Gary's grandma's recipe, and sweet and savoury muffins for anyone craving a healthy(ish) minimunch.
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Golden Temple
Golden Temple's quietly upscale setting means that you don't have to feel like you're back in school just because you're eating vegetarian food. Its international menu of Indian thali Middle Eastern and Mexican platters is good and inexpensive. Leave room for the totally wicked banana-cream pie.
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Goodies
This once-country place in the Negen Straatjes with rustic picnic tables has gone glam with a slick makeover, a bar and even occasional DJ nights. They've joined the tapas wave, but it's still popular for creative sandwiches like grilled chicken with salad and pine nuts.
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Green Planet
This modern veggie eatery cares…about your health, biodegradable packaging, peace, love and decent food. Come for a soup, salad, antipasto or cake. Mains include goulash, dumplings and Indian masala.
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Grekas
What started as a catering shop has bloomed into one of the city's best-loved Greek restaurants. Low overheads (there's almost no seating) means low prices with high-quality, generous portions of Greek home cooking: moussaka, roasted artichokes, chicken in lemon sauce.
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Haesje Claes
Haesje Claes' warm surrounds, a tad touristy but with lots of dark wood and antique knick-knacks, is just the place to sample comforting pea soup and endive stamppot . The fish starter has a great sampling of Dutch fish.
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Hap Hmm
Elsewhere around €6 might buy you a bowl of soup, but at this wood-panelled neighbourhood place it might buy an entire dinner: simple Dutch cooking (meat + veggies + potatoes), served on stainless steel dishes. Beer is cheap too.
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Hein
Hein simply loves to cook, and it shows in her simple, stylish, sky-lit café - you have to walk through the kitchen to reach the dining room. Media types, doing business over brunch, comment that she has a great touch with simple dishes: croque monsieur or madame, smoked salmon and fresh fruit salads.
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Hemelse Modder
A little hard to locate, but worth it. Extraordinary care goes into dishes - you might find pot-au-feu with chicken or polenta soufflé - and you may even find a sprig of mint in your carafe of water. Desserts are wonderful, including the namesake hemelse modder (heavenly mud) chocolate mousse. The dining room is spare yet comfy, or snag a table out back on a warm night.
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Herrie
The name translates as 'uproar' - after all, the chef appeared on a Dutch cooking programme 'Uproar in the Kitchen' - but make no mistake, this skilled team runs like clockwork. Refined creations such as marinated lobster with parmesan cream emerge from the open kitchen with choreographed timing, served in the chic grey-and-black interior. The only drawback is the limited ventilation, irritating if smokers are present.
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Japanese Pancake World
If the Dutch are famous for pancakes of meat, seafood and veggies, so are the Japanese. At the continent's only shop specialising in okonomiyaki (literally, 'cook as you like'), you'll get yours in a hot iron dish with your choice of fillings and topped with flakes of dried bonito. There's a J-pop backdrop and barely two dozen seats.
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Jean Jean
One of the hottest places in town, this cosy neighbourhood bistro offers honest and affordable Gallic comfort food: soups, meat and fish dishes etc. The setting is understated yet sophisticated, and service is professional.
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Kam Yin
There's zero atmosphere, and it may even be a bit dingy around the edges, but this big and bustling place is filled with ethnic Surinamese who know what's good: curries, plates of roast chicken, lamb or pork etc. Wash it down with Chinese tea or a can of coconut juice.
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Klokspijs
Located in an old bell-maker's workshop, this charming, intimate restaurant with a handful of tables makes for a fine end to a day of poking around De Pijp. The three-course menu of, say, smoked duck breast salad, grilled sea bass and strawberry-rhubarb cake is a class act, and the wine selection is small but superb.
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Koffiehuis Van Den Volksbond
This laid-back place began life as a charitable coffee house for dockers, and it still has a fashionably grungy vibe - wood floors, a giant red-rose mural and tall candles on the tables. The ever-changing menu has huge plates of comfort food with ingredients like mussels and merguez (a type of spicy sausage) , or try the risotto. The Belgian chocolate terrine has fans all over town.
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Krua Thai
Top-shelf soups, duck or shrimp curries, and noodle dishes are the order of the day at this sophisticated restaurant with bright art. Note: some locals refer to it by its old name, Tom Yam. A pre-theatre menu is available.
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La Rive
Two Michelin stars and a formal dining room with graciously spaced tables and views over the Amstel make La Rive the perfect venue for an out-to-impress lunch or dinner. The menu changes frequently, but standbys include turbot and truffle in potato pasta, or, as you'd expect, a starter of caviar.
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Lalibela
This shop just north of the Overtoom was the Netherlands' first Ethiopian restaurant, and it's still our favourite. Aksumite-hide paintings with Christian motifs hang on the walls. You can drink Ethiopian beer from a half-gourd, and taste your stews, egg and vegetable dishes using endjera, a spongy pancake, instead of utensils. Trippy African music rounds out the experience.
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Le Petit Latin
Easy to overlook, with its step-down entrance, the 'Little Latin' drips with culinary authority, and it's not just the curled travel posters from the Côte d'Azur. If you can't read the blackboard scrawl, chef Jacques from Marseille will crouch to give you the day's specials - Aquitaine lamb? Fresh mullet flown in from the Riviera? Who can say non . The wine list is brief but formidable . Reserve or weep.
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Local
This eel's nest of contempo-cool, with long, tall tables stretching its entire length, ensures that you will never eat alone. Go with friends, and it's an instant party. In keeping with the 'long and thin' theme, main dishes are grilled on skewers: there's an international selection from yakitori to beef stroganoff, all served with potatoes, salad and appropriate sauces.
