Photo: Ter Marsch & Co, via Misset Horeca
№ 01Grachtengordel · Gourmet burgers · €€€8.2
The NH Collection hotel's burger bar by the Bloemenmarkt, genuinely crowned the Netherlands' tastiest hamburger.
Ter Marsch & Co opened its first boutique burger restaurant in Rotterdam in 2014 and has spent a decade collecting national titles most burger places only claim in their own marketing. The Amsterdam branch sits inside the NH Collection FlowerMarket hotel at the corner of Singel and Vijzelstraat, right by the floating flower market, open daily from noon to ten with no reservation needed for small groups. The menu splits into Classic Hamburgers and Signature Hamburgers, and the latter carry actual trophies: La Fiesta de Carne, built on Spanish Black Angus with Manchego cheese custard, 24-month Serrano ham and a chorizo-nut crumble, won the NK Lekkerste Burger 2024, the Dutch national tastiest-burger championship judged at Horecava and organized by Stichting de Lekkerste Wedstrijden. The same chef, Andy Hoogvliets, then won NK Loaded Fries 2025 with a Bali Spice Fries recipe. Both awards are real, dated and checkable against the competition's own results pages, not just restaurant marketing copy. Brunch and lunch run until 16:00 alongside the full burger menu, and a serious cocktail list backs up the fries.
Order · Open daily 12:00-22:00, walk-ins welcome for small groups (email ahead for parties of 8+); brunch and lunch dishes run until 16:00 alongside the burger menu.
Photo: Bar Bonnie
№ 02Schinkelbuurt · Cafe-bistro, smashburger · €€8.0
The highest-scoring burger in the city, and it is a snacks-menu afterthought at a full-day cafe that would run just fine without it.
Bar Bonnie is not built around a burger. It is a full-day cafe-bistro-bar from the Goudvisch family, the group behind Arie, De Neef van Fred, Moos and Polly, open from half past nine for coffee and pastries and running straight through lunch, dinner and cocktails until one or three in the morning depending on the night. The smashburger sits on the snacks section of a menu that also covers oysters, bitterballen and a full dinner card, which makes its Broodjestester score of 9.0, the highest of any burger this scan turned up, feel almost accidental. Two patties smashed hard, cheddar melted into the crust, pickles and relish on a soft brioche bun, served with fries from the respected Frites uit Zuyd. Broodjestester called it the outright winner across every round of their Amsterdam burger series; Your Little Black Book put it on their shortlist of the city's six best smash burgers. Go for the burger if that is the mission, but Bonnie works just as well as a coworking corner, a Sunday breakfast, or a late cocktail on the way home. The tiled bar under the neon sign is worth a look regardless.
Order · Open Sun-Wed 09:30-00:00, Thu 09:30-01:00, Fri-Sat 09:30-03:00; kitchen opens at 10:00, so the smashburger is on the menu from mid-morning.
Photo: Kikkie van de Prinsensluis, via Your Little Black Book
№ 03Jordaan · Dutch brown cafe, smashburger · €€7.9
A Jordaan brown-cafe corner where the smashburger, and its addictive green sauce, runs a close second to Bonnie citywide.
On the corner of Prinsenstraat and Prinsengracht, Kikkie van de Prinsensluis looks like a classic Amsterdam brown cafe until the plates arrive. It runs a seasonal a la carte menu of quiche with scamorza, mussels with 'nduja and barbecued octopus, with a chef who smokes his own pastrami, but the smashburger is what put it on the radar. Broodjestester ranked it second in the city at 8.8, one notch below Bar Bonnie, praising the tender meat and a mayo built around a green sauce nobody has quite pinned down; reviewers keep calling it a match for the best burgers they have had in the US. Your Little Black Book featured the room in April 2025 for its mix of traditional brown-cafe warmth and a tighter, more contemporary kitchen than the format usually delivers. Open seven days from ten in the morning until late, it works equally well for a solo lunch at the bar, a slow dinner for two by the canal-side windows, or a group taking over the corner tables. The green sauce alone is worth the detour.
Order · Open daily from 10:00: Sun 10:00-23:00, Mon-Wed 10:00-00:00, Thu 10:00-01:00, Fri-Sat 10:00-02:00. No online booking widget found; call ahead for weekend dinner tables.
Photo: Cannibale Royale
№ 04Ruysdaelkade · Charcoal-grilled burgers & steaks · €€€7.8
Charcoal-grilled thick-patty burgers and a canal-side terrace, the long-running De Pijp brasserie serious carnivores keep coming back to.
Cannibale Royale has run the charcoal grill for years, starting at Handboogstraat in the centre before spreading to six branches citywide plus Rotterdam. The format hasn't needed fixing: a boisterous brasserie built around burgers, ribs and steaks, with one of the longer craft beer lists in the city. The house burger, Le Cannibale Royale, piles pulled pork, sauerkraut, cheddar and bbq sauce onto a 170-gram grass-fed patty, the version a recent reviewer called the best burger they'd ever eaten. Staff quietly prefer Le Magnifique instead, feta and harissa mayo cutting through the char. Ruysdaelkade isn't the original branch, but it's the one locals actually return to, praised across thousands of reviews on TheFork and Google with almost no complaint beyond the noise on a packed Friday. Six branches means the format is proven rather than precious, and this is the one to pick: canal light through the windows, a terrace that fills fast, and a kitchen running until midnight most nights. Book ahead or take your chances at the bar.
Order · Kitchen runs 17:00-23:00 Monday to Thursday, later Friday and Saturday, and only Saturday and Sunday add a 12:00-17:00 lunch sitting.
Photo: Bon Burger
№ 05Borgerbuurt · Smashburger, natural wine · €€7.6
Bottleshop's canal-side smashburger and natural wine counter in Oud-West, walk-in only and worth the wait.
Bon Burger started as pop-ups and kitchen takeovers run by the team behind Bottleshop, Amsterdam's well-regarded natural wine bar in Oost, before landing a permanent home on Jacob van Lennepkade in April 2025, in the old Cafe Lennep space. The format is deliberately narrow: five or so smashburgers, a hot dog, snacks, and a wine list built around the same natural, low-intervention bottles that made Bottleshop's name, poured instead of the usual craft beer pairing. The patties come dry-aged and smashed hard on a soft brioche bun with a special sauce and properly melted aged cheddar. No reservations, an industrial-light interior, and a terrace that runs right up to the water on the sunny side of the kade. A second, larger location opened in Amsterdam-Noord in spring 2026 with reservations and an open kitchen, but the original West outpost is still the tighter, walk-in version that built the reputation, and reviewers keep ranking its cheese burger among the best in the country. Go hungry and go a little early.
Order · Open Mon-Thu 16:00-23:00, Fri 16:00-00:30, Sat 13:00-00:30, Sun 13:00-23:00. Walk-ins only, no reservations, so weekend evenings mean a short wait at the door.
Photo: The Burger Boys
№ 06Bos en Lommer · Smash burgers · €€7.5
One of Amsterdam's first dedicated smash-burger counters, a single beef patty done exactly right on a quiet stretch of Bos en Lommer.
Janana opened as one of the first dedicated smash-burger counters in Amsterdam, on a residential stretch of Willem de Zwijgerlaan where the whole appeal is the burger, not the room. Everything is made in-house daily: the milk buns, the patties, the horseradish aioli, and the beef (or soy, for the vegetarian version) gets pressed hard enough to earn the lace-edged crust smash devotees chase. The Burger Boys gave it one of the highest scores on their site in 2024, calling the bun perfection and the toppings genuinely inventive, bacon and caramelized onion jam, spicy peanut butter with Madame Jeanette pepper. Google agrees: 4.8 from over five hundred reviews. It isn't unanimous, one Broodjestester TikTok visit landed a rare low score, and the seating is genuinely tight, a handful of stools plus sidewalk blankets in winter. Worth knowing before you go: it's card-only, closed Sunday and Monday, and there's no queue to game. Order the classic beef, skip the sweet bacon jam if you don't want sugar with your char, and eat it standing if you have to.
Order · Open Tuesday to Saturday, 16:00-22:00 only, closed Sunday and Monday; card only, no cash.
Photo: Le Smash
№ 07Govert Flinckstraat · Halal smash burgers · €€7.3
Built its queue with a hired social media agency before the food had a track record; we checked it anyway and the burger holds up on its own, right at our bar.
Le Smash's founders hired a social media agency before they had much of a track record, and it worked: local press clocked the TikTok reach at four and a half million, and the shop has since grown to eleven locations nationwide. That backstory is worth knowing before you queue. What's underneath it holds up on its own: a fully halal, double-smashed patty with lace-crisp edges and melted cheddar on a soft potato bun, plus a house cheese sauce for the fries that independent reviewers keep singling out as the better half of the meal. The room is tiny, order-by-screen, first-come seating, so treat it as a stand-and-eat stop rather than a sit-down dinner. A minority of reviewers find the flavour flat next to the marketing, a fair complaint on an off night, though most visits land closer to genuinely good than overhyped. The honest move: skip the evening queue entirely and go at 17:30 or on a weekday afternoon, when the burger is exactly as good and the wait is ten minutes instead of forty.
Order · Open daily from noon until they sell out; go at 17:30 or on a weekday to dodge the evening queue. No reservations, order at the screen.