Photo: Restaurant De Kas
№ 01Park Frankendael · Farm-to-table · €€€€9.1
Michelin-starred cooking inside the greenhouse where your dinner was picked this morning.
Every city now has a restaurant claiming its vegetables were 'harvested today'. De Kas has been making that literally true since 2001, when Gert-Jan Hageman rescued the municipal nursery's 1926 greenhouse in Park Frankendael and planted tomatoes where the city once grew its street trees. The set menu is written around whatever the gardeners cut that morning, here and at the restaurant's Beemster field, and the kitchen holds both a red Michelin star and a green one for the trouble. Meat and fish appear, but as supporting cast; the vegetable cooking is the point, and it has more swagger than most steakhouses. The room is all light and leaf, herbs growing at eye level, Frankendael's lawns beyond the glass. Weekday lunch is the smart-money move; dinner under the glowing glass is the anniversary one.
Order · Ask for the fully vegetarian version of the menu in high summer, when the tomato course comes from metres away.
Photo: Rijsel / Janus van den Eijnden
№ 02Weesperzijde · French-Flemish · €€€8.7
Rotisserie chicken and Flemish classics in a gloriously noisy former home-economics school.
Rijsel is the Dutch name for Lille, and the kitchen looks that way too: north-French and Flemish cooking done with the confidence of people who see no reason to reinvent anything. The room, a former domestic-science school canteen off the Weesperzijde, still has the strip-lit, scrubbed-wood look of a classroom, which somehow makes the whole thing better, this is a restaurant about what's on the plate and who's at your table. The rotisserie birds are the calling card, burnished and dripping over frites, but the tartare, the côte de boeuf and whatever's on the short-changing menu deserve equal attention, along with a properly French wine list. Booking is a blood sport: reservations for each month open on the first of the previous one, and locals set alarms. That should tell you enough.
Order · The spit-roasted chicken with frites, order it even if you came intending not to.
Photo: 4850
№ 03Oosterparkbuurt / Weesperzijde · Wine bar · €€8.6
Seven hundred natural wines on a nothing street; a citywide pilgrimage.
By day it's a Scandinavian-calm coffee bar, La Cabra beans, house cinnamon-cardamom buns worth the detour alone, and from three in the afternoon it flips into one of the best natural wine bars in the Netherlands, full stop. The cellar runs past 700 references with a French spine of Jura, Burgundy, Loire and grower Champagne; names like Ganevat, Labet and Overnoy show up on a chalk-quiet list in a side street off the Oosterpark where nothing this good has any business being. No reservations, card only, no phone, you walk in, take a stool, and let the staff pour you something you'll be chasing for years. Since the chef moved on in 2026 the evening food is snacks rather than a kitchen, which settles what this place always was: the long apéro before dinner elsewhere in Oost, or the reason you never make it there.
Order · Ask for a by-the-glass pour from the Jura shelf and a cardamom bun.
Photo: Fuku Ramen
№ 04Transvaalbuurt · Japanese, ramen tasting menu · €€€8.3
Ramen as a six course tasting menu; the hardest reservation in Oost and worth every refresh.
Jakub Karczewski cooked his way from Poland through Amsterdam kitchens and then decided the city needed ramen treated like a tasting menu, so that is exactly what happens in this corner building in the Transvaalbuurt. Wednesday to Friday there is one six course menu, built around noodles made in house and a shoyu ramen layered with several soy sauces, bookended by things like tataki, karaage and gyoza that would carry a restaurant on their own. Parool's Mara Grimm handed it a 9.5, Gault&Millau gives it 15 out of 20, and the reservation system has become a city wide sport: seats drop on the first of the month at noon, two months ahead, and evaporate. Saturday is the pressure valve, an izakaya afternoon with rotating ramen specials and a handful of walk in stools. The room is dark tile and warm wood, eight seats deep at the counter, and completely serious.
Order · Set an alarm: reservations open the 1st of each month at 12:00 noon, released two months ahead, and go instantly. Missed out? Saturday izakaya (13:00-19:30) keeps limited walk-in counter seats; come early.
Photo: VRR
№ 05Oostenburg · Modern Dutch · €€€8.2
Bakery by day, the resurrected soul of Restaurant As by night, in an 1895 warehouse on Oostenburg.
First the bad news: Restaurant As is gone from the Beatrixpark. The good news is that Sander Overeinder packed up his sourdough and his Beemster farmers and moved everything to a 19th century warehouse on Oostenburg, teaming up with the Hotel de Goudfazant people along the way. By day this is Stadsbakkerij As, all long fermentation and pastry. Around six the flour settles and VRR takes over: a generous a la carte of Dutch ingredients cooked with real intent, grilled fava beans with sheep's cheese, kruudmoes with marrow and cockles, milk ice cream people describe in hushed tones. The name stands for Voorheen Rosa en Rita, a nod to the previous tenants of the building. The terrace between the brick and the wildflowers is one of the nicest places to sit in Oost, and the wine room leans biodynamic without preaching about it. Parool's critic went to an 8,5. She is not wrong.
Order · The Diner de Quartier neighbourhood menu is the cheat code at 29.50; no reservation needed if you take a seat at the bar.
Photo: Café Wu, via Gault&Millau
№ 06Dapperbuurt · Chinese-inspired modern bistro · €€€8.2
A butcher's Chinese bistro on the Dappermarkt that Parool, Volkskrant and NRC all fell for at once.
Timo de Beurs already ran one of the city's best butcher counters, then opened this Chinese inspired bistro on the corner of the Dappermarkt in February 2024 and watched it detonate. Parool came early, published late, called it one of the most interesting restaurants in Amsterdam and gave it a 9 minus; the restaurant logged 800 reservations before dinner service that day, and Volkskrant and NRC piled on with praise of their own. Wu means the house of five flavors: a set menu or a short a la carte of snacks, small and large dishes, Chinese technique with French product fetishism and plating that would not embarrass a starred kitchen. Chi Ling Wu curates the wine with Enoteca Sprezzatura, and music comes off vinyl through a proper sound bar, because everything here is slightly more considered than it needed to be. Tuesday through Saturday, dinner only. Book ahead; the hype was correct.
Order · First visit, take the set menu so the kitchen can walk you through its five flavors logic; the a la carte is for return trips. Tue-Sat from 18:00, book via the site widget.
Photo: Mama Makan / Hyatt Regency Amsterdam
№ 07Plantage / Weesperbuurt · Indonesian · €€€8.2
Grand-café Indonesian where the rijsttafel actually earns the ceremony.
Yes, it's technically inside the Hyatt on the Plantage edge, and yes, you should go anyway. Mama Makan is what happens when a hotel decides its restaurant should out-cook half the city: a high-ceilinged, plant-strewn dining room wrapped around an open kitchen, with chef Sebastian Sebau running the woks. The rijsttafel comes three ways, classic, Mama's favourites, or fully vegan, and it lands as a proper parade of little copper bowls: opor ayam silky with coconut, rendang that's been given the time it deserves, sambals with genuine menace. Most Amsterdam rijsttafels are a tourist tax; this one is cooking. Service is hotel-polished without being stiff, which makes it the rare Indonesian in town where you can bring your parents, a date, or a business contact and win with all three. Book the early sitting and take your time.
Order · Order Mama's Favourite rijsttafel and ask for the extra-hot sambal on the side.
Photo: Wilde Zwijnen
№ 08Javaplein · Modern Dutch · €€€8.2
The Javaplein pioneer that proved modern Dutch cooking is a real thing.
When Wilde Zwijnen opened on Javaplein in 2010, this end of the Indische Buurt was not where you went for dinner. Sixteen years on it's still the neighbourhood's anchor: rough wooden tables, green enamel lamps, chalk scrawled on tabletops, and a kitchen that has quietly done more for the phrase 'modern Dutch' than any government campaign. The menu is set-course only, built from Dutch soil and Dutch water, seasonal vegetables, sustainable fish, and in autumn the game that gives the place its name. Cooking is precise without being precious; Gault&Millau keeps it rated, and the front-of-house keeps it loose. The heated, awninged terrace on the square works most of the year, and the adjoining Eetbar takes walk-ins with oysters and small plates when the restaurant is booked. Which, on weekends, it will be.
Order · Come in October and let them serve you the wild boar, it's the house namesake for a reason.
Photo: Caperleaves
№ 09Kadijken (Entrepotdok) · Modern Dutch, open fire · €€€8.1
Daily-changing, all-Dutch produce cooked over fire in a former billiard hall on the prettiest dock in town.
A former billiard hall on the Entrepotdok, all beams and bright walls, where the menu changes daily because it is written around whatever Dutch soil and the North Sea handed over that morning. Everything is sourced within the Netherlands, which sounds like a gimmick until you taste what they do with a beet or a stick of rhubarb over the fire. Hiske Versprille gave it a 9 in Parool and crowned it the paper's best restaurant of 2018, and the kitchen never coasted on that. Vegetables get the star treatment, meat and fish play support, and the open fire does the seasoning. Order three or four dishes a la carte like the staff suggests, or surrender to the set menu. The room hums rather than roars, service knows the wine list cold, and the Entrepotdok quay outside is one of the prettiest walks home in the city.
Order · Do three or four a la carte dishes instead of the set menu and make at least two of them vegetables; that is where this kitchen shows off. Dinner only, Monday to Saturday from 18:00.
Photo: MITTS
№ 10Indische Buurt / Javastraat · Middle Eastern · €€8.1
Javastraat's cosiest mezze room, vegetable-first and quietly serious about it.
A small, warm slot on the Javastraat with cushioned benches, greenery up the walls, and a mezze menu that treats vegetables as the main event and meat as the guest. The list skews long on veg, charred greens, house flatbreads still puffed from the oven, hummus that hasn't seen a supermarket tub in its life, with a short, confident meat section for the carnivores in your party. Around 85% of the kitchen is certified organic, which they mention once and then let the food argue for. Order too much; the plates are built for it, and the kitchen paces them so your table never turns into a traffic jam. It's the kind of neighbourhood restaurant the Indische Buurt deserves: cheaper than it tastes, friendlier than it needs to be, and busy with people who live three streets away.
Order · Get the flatbread the second you sit down and drag everything through it.
Photo: Roopram Roti
№ 11Dapperbuurt · Surinamese · €8.1
The city's benchmark roti, worth every minute of the Dapperbuurt queue.
Ask ten Amsterdammers where the best roti is and at least seven will say Roopram, then argue about which branch. This one, a few steps off the Dappermarkt, is the one that matters: a bright, no-nonsense canteen where the line snakes past the counter from opening at two until the kitchen winds down. The roti themselves are the argument-ender, supple, flaky flatbread folded around lamb or chicken stewed to collapse, with potato, egg and kousenband, the whole thing perfumed with masala that the Roopram family has been calibrating since their Paramaribo days. Order at the counter, grab a formica table, eat with your hands like everyone else. Note the house rules: Mondays closed, and the last ninety minutes are takeaway only, because a roti this good deserves to be eaten fresh.
Order · Lamb roti, plus a barra (split-pea doughnut) on the side while you wait.
Photo: Your Little Black Book
№ 12Oostelijk Havengebied (Sporenburg) · Turkish / Mediterranean · €€€8.0
Great British Menu winner Selin Kiazim cooks whatever she feels like on Sporenburg, and what she feels like is usually exactly right.
Selin Kiazim ran the acclaimed Oklava in Shoreditch, won Great British Menu, wrote two cookbooks, then closed it all down and moved to a corner building on Sporenburg with her partner Steph de Goeijen. Amsterdam won that trade. Esra is small, warm and handwritten: the menu changes daily depending on what the farmers dropped off, so in summer you get one set menu at 55 and you trust the kitchen. That trust gets repaid in courgette and feta meze with pistachios, fried vegetables with confit garlic yoghurt, and a house sucuk and grilled cheese bun with Old Amsterdam cream cheese that reads like a joke and eats like a keeper. Gault&Millau walked in and handed over two toques on the spot. The wine list wanders through Turkey, Georgia and Croatia. Steph runs the room like she has known you for years. Sit at the counter if you enjoy watching people who are very good at their jobs.
Order · Saturday is the only lunch service and the easiest booking. They take real holidays: closed 23 August to 9 September 2026, so check before you cycle out.
Photo: Troef, via Your Little Black Book
№ 13Weesperzijde · Modern French · €€€7.9
Michelin-selected French bistro in Oost with a wine room built for three thousand bottles and pedigree from 212, Ron Blaauw and Escobar.
Troef sits on a quiet corner of Schollenbrugstraat, and it has been the address to book in Oost since it opened in 2023. The team is deep: Niels Leijssenaar spent a decade with Ron Blaauw, Raymond Plat cooked under Richard van Oostenbrugge and Thomas Groot at 212, and Roderick Kunst and Willem Alberts brought the bar sense that built Escobar. Together they run a modern French bistro that plays it straight: smoked eel with crispy potato, a vol-au-vent stacked with crayfish and sweetbread, a cordon bleu built from quail, pigeon and raclette. Behind the dining room sits a wine room fitted for three thousand bottles, already two thirds full, where diners are encouraged to wander in and pick something based on nothing more than curiosity. The Michelin Guide has taken note, Gault&Millau scored it 14.5, and the team picked up an award for Bistronomy of the Year in 2024. None of it feels like an award show. It still feels like a neighborhood bistro that happens to be one of the best in the city.
Order · Dinner only, 17:30-23:00 every night. Ask for a seat at the pass if you want to watch the open kitchen, and set aside time to browse the wine room before you sit down.
Photo: Café-Restaurant Dauphine
№ 14Amstelkwartier / Amstel Station · French brasserie · €€€7.9
French brasserie classics in a gorgeous former Renault showroom by Amstel station.
A 1960s Renault showroom turned all-day brasserie, which explains the acreage: soaring glass, leather banquettes, and enough floor space to park the cars that used to live here. Dauphine has been feeding this unglamorous corner by Amstel station for years and remains the definitive answer to several Amsterdam problems, where to take eight colleagues, where to meet your parents off the train, where to eat a proper steak tartare at half past two on a Tuesday. The kitchen does French-Italian brasserie standards without irony: tartare cut to order, a côte de boeuf for sharing, bavette-frites, decent oysters. Nothing chases trends, everything arrives competent and generous, and the room does the rest. Note the summer rhythm: weekdays only, kitchen from ten in the morning. It's the neo-bistro's older, better-tailored uncle, and Oost is lucky to have him.
Order · Steak tartare, cut to order, with a mountain of frites.
Photo: Bar Bouche
№ 15Weesperzijde · Bistro · €€7.9
A pocket-sized bourgondisch bistro punching far above its Wibautstraat postcode.
The Wibautstraat used to be the street you crossed to get somewhere better. Bar Bouche is part of the correction: a tiny, warm-lit room with a big heated terrace, run by people who take 'bourgondisch' as a job description rather than a marketing word. The menu is short, seasonal and slightly show-offy in the best way, mackerel mousse on brioche, burrata under sour cherries and candied walnuts, leeks slicked with herb oil and crisped ham, a veal ribeye when you're feeling flush, with a wine list that leans French and generous. TheFork users score it a near-perfect 9.5, which for a spot this size is both remarkable and a warning: book the terrace or come early and charm your way onto a bar stool. Puddings matter here too; leave room.
Order · Start with the mackerel mousse brioche, finish with the sticky toffee cake.
Photo: Pide BKRY via Google Maps
№ 16Oosterparkbuurt · turkish · €7.9
Reddit's favourite lahmacun, stretched and blistered all day by the Oosterpark.
Ask r/Amsterdam where the real lahmacun lives and someone will type Pide BKRY before the thread loads. This Oosterparkbuurt bakery works like the pide salons of Anatolia: ovens on from seven in the morning, trays of kıymalı pide sliding out all day, lahmacun stretched wafer-thin, blistered and rolled around fresh salad at the counter while you point. TikTok's Daan van der Lecq calls the kalfsdöner 'niet normaal' and he is right; the meat comes off their own spit, not a frozen cone. There are a few stools, a fridge of ayran, baklava by the tray, and a lunchtime line of builders, students and Turkish grandmothers who all know exactly what they want. You spend a fiver, eat standing up, and start planning the next visit before the lemon wedge runs dry.
Order · Lahmacun rolled with fresh salad and lemon; add kalfsdöner in it if you are hungry.
Photo: De Poldervogel
№ 17Watergraafsmeer · Modern Dutch, refined comfort food · €€€7.7
The Watergraafsmeer finally has its own corner restaurant, run by a couple with De Kas and Vuurtoreneiland in their knife rolls.
Lisa has lived in the Watergraafsmeer her whole life and cooked at De Kas up the road. Bart has lived here ten years, with stints at Vuurtoreneiland and Reine & La Rue in Melbourne. In May 2026 they took over a corner spot on the Buys Ballotstraat and did the sensible thing: they opened the restaurant their own street was missing. The kitchen calls it refined comfort food, which in practice means oysters with kombu mignonette, a bitterbal made of confit duck, and a twelve hour short rib that slumps onto its mousseline the moment your fork gets near. Wines come from small European growers and the room runs on the kind of warmth you only get when the owners live around the corner. Het Parool profiled them within weeks and the Meer, a neighborhood that usually has to cycle for its dinners, promptly claimed every table. Book, or come early and eat at the bar.
Order · Start with the duck bitterballen and a couple of oysters, then split the short rib. Saturday opens at 15:00 for an early borrel before the dinner crowd lands.
Photo: Restaurant Merkelbach
№ 18Watergraafsmeer (Park Frankendael) · Slow Food Dutch, vegetable-forward lunch · €€€7.7
Geert Burema has cooked Slow Food lunches in the coach house of Amsterdam's last country estate since 2004, with herbs picked from the park outside.
In the right coach house of Huize Frankendael, the only surviving buitenplaats in the city, Geert Burema has been quietly running one of Amsterdam's most principled kitchens since 2004. He founded the Dutch Slow Food chefs alliance, and the menu reads like the manifesto: daytime cooking that is largely vegetarian, herbs from Park Frankendael itself, meat and fish from farmers he can name without checking. Lunch might be kimchi hummus with grilled pointed cabbage or a koolrabi tartlet with green asparagus, plated with a precision that would cost double across the ring. The terrace looks onto what locals stubbornly call the most beautiful garden in Amsterdam, and they are right. Evenings belong to the neighborhood in the oldest sense: birthdays, weddings and condolence gatherings in the eighteenth century salons. De Kas gets the taxis and the headlines. The Watergraafsmeer keeps Merkelbach for itself, on weekdays, in daylight, at half the fuss.
Order · It is a daytime restaurant, so treat it as the long lunch it wants to be: the three course menu, a glass from the small list, and a walk through the Frankendael stijltuin afterwards. Book ahead for a terrace table in summer.
Photo: Moche
№ 19Middenmeer · Peruvian · €€€7.7
Christian Motte's weekly-changing ode to ceviche, tucked into a quiet corner of Amsterdam Oost.
Christian Motte didn't invent ceviche, but he might be the first person in Amsterdam to explain why it matters that he didn't. Born in Lima, he cooked in London, Dubai and Geneva before co-founding NAZKA, then landed on Linnaeuskade with a project named for the pre-Columbian people credited with curing fish in citrus centuries before the rest of the world caught on. The menu resets weekly: five starters, five mains, two desserts, built for the table rather than the plate. Ceviche and tiradito do the heavy lifting (scallop with blood orange, salmon brightened with citrus and plantain crisps), but the kitchen also sends out a beef lomo saltado worth ordering twice, and duck with miso-glazed pointed cabbage that reads more chef's travels than tourist-menu Peru. Pisco carries the drinks list, with a flight for anyone who wants the crash course. Book ahead: the room seats few, the crowd already knows it, and Tuesday through Saturday it fills fast on word of mouth alone.
Order · Tuesday and Wednesday get you a table without the wait, and the pisco flight is the fastest introduction to the spirit in the city. Open Tuesday-Thursday 17:00-23:00, Friday-Saturday 17:00-01:00, closed Sunday-Monday.
Photo: Roest, via AmsterdamNow
№ 20Oostenburg · French-Mediterranean grill, family style · €€7.7
The De Kopgroep team's second act for the old techno palace: a waterside hall, family-style plates, a serious Asian streak.
Fifteen years after Roest's rave-and-raw-warehouse era, the same waterside hall at Jacob Bontiusplaats reopened in March 2025 under De Kopgroep, the five behind De Willem, Kopstootbar and Jajem: Maarten de Vries, Jamie van der Will, Sunny Bakhtiar, Ischa van Bemmelen and chef Jef van den Hout, who runs both this kitchen and De Willem's. The old industrial bones, steel, concrete, 200 seats across six areas, are intact, but the menu reads like De Willem's cousin: kimchi cheese croquettes with gochujang dip, skate wing in tom yum bisque with barbecued pak choi, a 600 gram cote de boeuf for the table. It is officially French and Mediterranean, served family style, but the kitchen keeps reaching east for miso, shiitake XO and chili crisp, and nobody is pretending otherwise. By day it is a long-table room looking at the water; by night the six spaces, wine room, studio, platform, main hall, turn into the kind of loud, communal dinner Oostenburg's new apartment blocks were missing. The terrace alone, right on the water, is worth the trip before the kitchen even opens.
Order · Open daily from 12:00 until late. Book the terrace tables on the water for summer; groups over 25 need to email ahead.
Photo: Café-Restaurant De Plantage
№ 21Plantage · Mediterranean · €€7.7
Mediterranean brasserie cooking inside the prettiest cast-iron winter garden in Amsterdam.
Next to the Artis zoo gates sits the 19th-century Ledenlokalen, a soaring hall of glass and mint-green cast iron that was restored into this all-day brasserie, and honestly, half the score is the room. Light pours through the wraparound windows onto marble, birch chairs and one enormous indoor tree; on a grey Tuesday it feels like being let off the hook for winter. The kitchen holds up its end with sunny Mediterranean cooking: ricotta-and-pea ravioli with lemon butter, barbecued squid stuffed with scampi, sardines with peperonata, and a slow-roasted Burgos lamb shoulder carved for two. Wines lean organic, prices stay reasonable, and the terrace faces the greenest street in the city. It runs from morning coffee to late drinks daily, takes groups without flinching, and is the rare parents-visiting option that locals use anyway.
Order · Split the slow-roasted Burgos lamb shoulder for two, with frites on the side.
Photo: Breman Brasserie / The Hoxton, Lloyd Amsterdam
№ 22Oostelijk Havengebied (Oostelijke Handelskade) · French brasserie · €€€7.6
French brasserie cooking under the chandeliers of the old Lloyd Hotel, with a big south-facing terrace on the IJ.
The Lloyd building has been feeding travellers since 1921, when architect Evert Breman designed it as a hotel for emigrants waiting on ships to South America. The Hoxton moved in in 2023 and named the ground-floor restaurant after him, all art deco curves, glass chandeliers and a hand-painted tile mural behind the terrazzo bar. Since a March 2026 relaunch the kitchen cooks French brasserie food with more care than the hotel setting suggests: steak tartare with cured egg yolk, a short rib bourguignon that Barts Boekje singled out, a croque madame that swaps the ham for pastrami. Lunch is the move, a daily 12:00-16:00 card of sandwiches and full mains that people from the Handelskade offices have quietly claimed, and the terrace seats around two hundred when the IJ light cooperates. Yes, it is a hotel restaurant, but non-guests outnumber guests at midday and the room is one of the best-looking in Oost. Barbue, the cocktail bar next door, handles the afterwards.
Order · Lunch runs daily 12:00-16:00 and weekday walk-ins are easy; book ahead for the terrace on sunny weekends. Dinner daily 18:00-22:00, terrace 10:00-22:00, breakfast from 7:00.
Photo: IJs van Oost
№ 23Indische Buurt · Ice cream · €7.6
The Javastraat's own daily-made scoop shop, priced like the neighborhood still belongs to the neighborhood.
No Italian origin story here, just a small Javastraat shop that makes everything fresh each morning with actual fruit, actual juice, vanilla pods and dairy, and sells it at prices that feel smuggled in from 2015: two scoops still slide under four euros. The Indische Buurt has adopted it completely, which you can measure by the stamp cards in every wallet on the street and by oost-online, the neighborhood paper, scoring it a 9 plus in its ice tour of Oost and calling the vanilla heavenly, round and creamy. The strawberry tastes like the fruit rather than the syrup, the caramel sea salt does brisk trade, and the rotating case rewards repeat visits, which is the entire business model. It is a pure counter operation, daytime into evening, no seats to speak of, made for eating on the walk to Flevopark. Oost finally has a scoop worth defending in arguments.
Order · Take the stamp card seriously: a full card is a free scoop, and at these prices it fills fast. The vanilla is the honest test of the place, order it at least once.
Photo: Boi Boi
№ 24Dapperbuurt · Thai and Laotian · €€7.6
A decade-old Dapperbuurt corner where a Laotian kitchen crew wok-fries isaan food under a grumpy monkey sign.
Boi Boi has been feeding the Dappermarkt corner since 2015 and still looks more like a funky bar than a Thai restaurant: street art, warm lights, a scowling monkey watching over the door. The kitchen is the real thing though, a Laotian crew cooking Thai and Lao isaan food from an open kitchen, with a chef lineage that runs back to Bird on the Zeedijk. Hiske Versprille gave it an 8 in Het Parool and the tom yum still tastes like the review reads: aromatic, sharp, properly spicy. Order sticky rice with the laab, get the tam mak-hung when you want your sinuses rinsed, and trust the daily curries over the pad thai. Everything is made without MSG and the vegan list is long enough to bring your most difficult friend. Ten years in, it is the Dapperbuurt default for a loud, cheap-ish, chili-soaked Tuesday dinner, and the neighborhood keeps it busy without any tourist help.
Order · Skip the pad thai reflex and go for the panaeng curry or laab with sticky rice. Kitchen opens at 16:00, so an early dinner before a Studio K screening always finds you a table.
Photo: Nina Slagmolen, via Entree Magazine
№ 25Watergraafsmeer · Dutch-French · €€7.6
Dutch-French sharing plates from a grandfather's grocery-garden idea, now with real vegetables to prove it.
Eshwin Boetting named this place after his grandfather Roelof, a Drenthe grocer who kept a garden that fed the family and the shop both. That idea now lives behind the restaurant on the Middenweg, where herbs and vegetables come straight off the beds and onto the plate, the beef tataki finished with kruiden uit eigen tuin rather than a supplier's box. The kitchen runs Dutch produce through a French frame: brioche with smoked eel and sour cream, a lamb shoarma salad with tzatziki and pita chips, a whole roast chicken with honey and garlic built for two to fight over. Fish comes from Wild 'n Zilt, caught with an eye on the North Sea's future rather than just tonight's catch. Three former townhouses were knocked into one warm, soft-toned room with a cheese bar at the far end, and downstairs seats forty for the kind of group dinner that starts civilized and doesn't stay that way. Closed Mondays, open for lunch Friday through Sunday. Barts Boekje summed it up as fijn, fijner, fijnst. Hard to argue.
Order · Doors open at 11:00 Friday through Sunday for the only lunch service of the week; Tuesday to Thursday it's dinner only from 16:30, closed Mondays.
Photo: Enoteca de Olyphant
№ 26Weesperzijde · Italian bistro-enoteca · €€7.5
A bistro-enoteca from three Amsterdam Oost regulars, built around a serious Italian-leaning wine list and food that doesn't overreach.
Three people who understood Amsterdam Oost needed a proper evening address opened De Olyphant in January 2026 inside the old Pepe Nero space on Eerste Oosterparkstraat: Bas Scheffer, Idske Dries and Erik van der Kooij, with chef Maarten van Westrop, formerly of Zoldering, running the kitchen. The name nods to Herberg de Olyphant, the inn that once stood here, and to Hansken, the elephant who passed through the neighborhood centuries ago. What they built is a bistro-enoteca that keeps its ambitions in check: vitello tonnato done properly, a burrata and roasted grape salad that earns its spot, pappardelle with oxtail ragout for the nights that call for something heavier. The wine list is the real draw, close to two hundred bottles with more than twenty by the glass and a sommelier happy to talk you through the Italian end of it; Star Wine List gave it a White Star for the trouble. Sixty-six seats split between an aperitivo counter and the dining room, and half the tables are held for people who just walk in.
Order · Half the tables are kept for walk-ins, so a spontaneous Wednesday works fine. Open Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 17:30, Friday from 16:00, Saturday and Sunday from 12:30, closed Tuesday.
Photo: Bar Botanique
№ 27Dapperbuurt · Mediterranean · €€7.4
A rainforest-green corner bar off the Dappermarkt that cooks better than it needs to.
Steps from the Dappermarkt stalls, Bar Botanique is the Dapperbuurt's living room: a corner café drenched floor-to-ceiling in green, ferns, velvet, palm-print everything, that would be worth a drink for the room alone. The pleasant surprise is that the kitchen tries. The format is Mediterranean shared dining, a table filling up with small seasonal plates that punch above what a bar this photogenic is obliged to serve, with a menu that keeps vegetarians as busy as everyone else. Come Saturday morning for a slow breakfast after raiding the market, or Friday night when it runs until two and the cocktail list takes over from the food. It's not chasing Michelin and neither are you; it's chasing a loud, easy, green-lit evening with six friends and no one checking the bill too closely. Reliably full of locals, which around here is the review that counts.
Order · Do the full shared-dining spread and let the kitchen send it out.
Photo: Bar Basquiat
№ 28Javastraat · Street food · €€7.4
The Javastraat corner bar where the whole Indische Buurt eventually washes up.
Every good street needs a corner like this one. Bar Basquiat holds down Javastraat and Sumatrastraat with a wraparound terrace of beer benches, a mint-green facade, and an interior riffing on Jean-Michel Basquiat without turning into a theme park. The kitchen sends out globe-trotting street food, tacos in several persuasions, crackly fried things, enough vegetarian options to keep a mixed table happy, and the bar backs it with craft beer, sharp cocktails and natural-leaning wines. Weekends it opens at ten for breakfast and doesn't stop until two the next morning, with DJs pushing the volume up as the plates get smaller. The Infatuation rates it; more tellingly, so does everyone within four blocks. It's not fine dining and never wanted to be, it's the neighbourhood's living room with better tacos.
Order · A round of the tacos with a cold Basquiat beer; add whatever's fried that week.
Photo: Eethuis Ricardo's
№ 29Javastraat · Surinamese · €7.3
Old-school Creole home cooking from Ricardo himself, now settled on Javastraat.
Ricardo Uden cooked around Amsterdam for years before opening his own eethuis in 2007, and the move to Javastraat gave the Indische Buurt one of the last places in the city doing genuinely old-fashioned Creole Surinamese food. The marinated barbecue chicken is what people cross town for, lacquered, smoky, ridiculously cheap, but the deeper cuts are the reason to linger: heri heri with bakkeljauw (salt cod over cassava, plantain and egg), aardappelsteak, maize pap, and homestyle cookies like bojo that most Surinamese grandmothers stopped making commercially decades ago. It's a counter-service eethuis, not a restaurant with ambitions: fluorescent-bright, plastic-tabled, portions built for people who worked all day. Culinessa calls it her favourite Surinamese spot in Amsterdam, and the Waterkant diaspora press agrees. Bring cash-level price expectations and an appetite.
Order · The heri heri with bakkeljauw, Friday's the traditional day for it.