Café Luxembourg

The Spui's grand café since the eighties, home of the Holtkamp shrimp croquette.

Every city needs one room where you can read a newspaper at eleven, lunch at one, and still be arguing about politics at six, and in Amsterdam that room has been Café Luxembourg since the late eighties. The marble tables and reading racks channel Paris; the kitchen is French brasserie recalibrated for Dutch appetites. The reason you cross town, though, is the garnalencroquet from Patisserie Holtkamp, Luxembourg helped develop the thing and introduced it to the city's café culture, and it remains the benchmark: molten North Sea shrimp inside a shatter of crumb, mustard on the side, white bread doing quiet support work. Holtkamp's bitterballen are here too, plus a genever list that starts with Bols and its 1575 paperwork. The heated terrace looks across the Spui to Hoppe, open since 1670. Sit, order, watch the book market amble by.

Two Holtkamp garnalenkroketten on white bread with mustard, the definitive Spui lunch.

What to order

Full menu

Holtkamp garnalencroquetten (2)€18.50
The shrimp croquette was co-invented here in the '80s; nationally famous, citrus mayo, still the order
Holtkamp bitterballen, draadjesvlees (6)€8.50
House claim: finest bitterbal in the city, regulars don't argue
Croque monsieur€14
Gruyère and béchamel done properly; the menu says you'll never want a tosti again
Twaalfuurtje De Luxe€19.50
Tomato soup, shrimp croquette, smoked salmon, the full Dutch lunch ritual on one tray
Luxemburger€22.50
Organic beef on brioche; the reliable non-croquette move