Photo: Fuku Ramen
№ 01Transvaalbuurt · Japanese, ramen tasting menu · €€€8.3
The ceiling of the scene: one six course menu, one monthly reservation scramble, and the best argument in town that ramen deserves the tasting-menu treatment.
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: Amsterdam Now
№ 02Elandsgracht · Ramen and izakaya · €€8.1
The Chun Cafe founders' ramen bar, named for the chef's hometown, cooking the city's most serious broth.
Amsterdam has plenty of places that serve ramen and very few that are about ramen; Gifu is the second kind. The founders of Chun Cafe built it around head chef Ryoji Miyachi and named it after his hometown in Japan, and the broth is where all that intention lands: deep, layered tonkotsu that diners keep calling the best they've had outside Japan, topped classically with chashu and a half-boiled egg, or extravagantly with wagyu that dissolves into it. Around the bowls runs a tight izakaya card, crispy teba kara, chicken lollipops, hamachi that arrives looking like it came from a much more expensive room. Speaking of the room: warm wood, low light, moody in the Japanese way rather than the Instagram way. The menu is short and not cheap for noodles, which is the one gripe in an otherwise startling 4.7 Google average across six hundred reviews. Book the dining room online or take your chances at the walk-in bar seats; weekend afternoons it does a ramen-only lunch.
Order · Tonkotsu with the half-boiled egg first visit, teba kara on the side; the wagyu bowl is the upgrade path.
Photo: Komareats
№ 03Oude Pijp / Ruysdaelkade · Ramen, dashi-forward · €€8.0
Chef Shige's pop-up gone permanent on the Ruysdaelkade, and the only ramen in town that lets dashi do the talking.
Chef Shigeyuki Awazu, Shige to everyone at the counter, cooked through Utage Sake Bar, Bar Theo and KU Kitchen Bar while running ramen pop-ups on his days off. In August 2025 the pop-up became a permanent shop on the Ruysdaelkade, and Amsterdam got its only truly dashi-led ramen since Fujitora closed. The broth is the whole argument: clams, niboshi, sababushi and kombu layered into something clear, light and quietly intense, finished with shoyu, shio or miso tare and a slick of ginger leek oil. Noodles are made in house, medium thick for shoyu and miso, thin for shio, and the topping set runs from aburi pork belly chashu to a proper shrimp wonton. Ramenko, the Japanese blogger who ranks every bowl in the city, ate here three days in a row the week it opened. A vegan shoyu built on kombu, shiitake and porcini keeps mixed tables happy, and the yuzu panna cotta is the rare ramen-shop dessert worth ordering. The room is small and calm, the kind of place where the loudest sound is slurping.
Order · Wed-Mon 17:00-22:00, closed Tuesday. No website, no booking, just turn up on the early side; the €8 saba tatsuta, deep fried mackerel with curry salt and lemon, is the sleeper side order.
Photo: Ramenko
№ 04Nieuwe Pijp / Van der Helstplein · Vegan ramen · €€7.9
The all-vegan sister of Men Impossible on a quiet Pijp square, home to what Ramenko calls the best tsukemen in Amsterdam.
Atsushi Ishida left a corporate career to make plant-based ramen nobody believed in, and his Men Impossible on the Hazenstraat is already in this guide. Kitchen Impossible, opened in September 2023 on the leafy Van der Helstplein, is the casual sister: same owner, different address, different idea. Where the Jordaan original is a communal-table tasting affair, this is a corner shop where you walk in, order at the counter and watch the square go by. Everything is fully vegan and none of it plays the substitute game: the Tan Tan Men blends sesame, soybeans and aromatic vegetables under house chili oil, the miso bowl carries crispy fried seitan, and the noodles are rolled in house from spelt flour. The Tsuke Men is the order of record; Ramenko, the Japanese blogger who ranks every bowl in town, calls it the best tsukemen in Amsterdam, and the yuzu soup wari they pour at the end to loosen the last of the dipping sauce backs the claim. Google holds it at 4.8, HappyCow at a straight 5.0, and lunch is the quiet bargain.
Order · Open Wed-Mon, lunch 12:00-14:00 (weekends to 15:00) and dinner 17:00-21:30, closed Tuesday. Walk-in only, and the €10 lunch set of onigiri, miso soup, cauliflower tempura and kimchi is one of the best cheap Japanese lunches in De Pijp.
Photo: Amsterdam Wonderland
№ 05Prins Hendrikkade · Ramen · €€7.7
Back from two dark years and provisional until we sit down ourselves; go for a weekday lunch, not a Saturday afternoon.
For years this twenty square metre counter opposite Centraal was the city's cult ramen shrine: touch-screen ordering, a one-seat-at-a-time system, One Piece volumes between the chopstick pots and a giant Mario in the window, plus the bowl Amsterdam Foodie crowned Ramen Nirvana. Then it went dark for roughly two years. The comeback landed in spring 2026, and so did the queue, which on a weekend afternoon can pass an hour before you even reach the kiosk. The kitchen still pours that creamy, deeply savoury pork broth under charred chashu, and the kaedama ritual survives: keep your broth, hand over the extra-noodle ticket, receive a fresh tangle. Regulars from the old days say the bowls taste exactly as they used to. They also note the owner changed in the handover and the room runs slower than before, which is why our score stays provisional until we sit down ourselves. Bowls run about €20, portions lean Japanese rather than Dutch, and the spicy pork remains the order that built the legend.
Order · Daily 12:00-22:00 under the new regime. Weekend afternoons the line can eat two hours; a weekday lunch or a Saturday after 20:00 gets you seated in minutes. One ramen per person minimum, no sharing, no reservations.
Photo: Men Impossible
№ 06Zuid-Jordaan (Hazenstraat) · Vegan Japanese, handmade ramen · €€7.7
Reservation-only vegan ramen kaiseki at one communal table, hand-rolling its noodles since 2017.
Men Impossible has been doing reservation only, plant based ramen on the Hazenstraat since 2017, long before vegan tasting menus were a category. The format has not softened: one communal table, one five course menu inspired by kaiseki, noodles rolled by hand every morning from spelt flour, and a booking system designed so that nothing gets cooked for a no show. You eat what the kitchen decided, usually ending in tsukemen with a choice of dipping soups, each built without MSG from organic European produce, which is the impossible part of the name. Around 58 euros for five courses, a sake pairing for 35 more, and a room small enough that the chef narrates. Carnivores tend to arrive skeptical and leave quiet. It is not a quick bowl of noodles, it is dinner theatre at a shared table, and after nine years it still books out two weeks ahead.
Order · Reservation only, via the site, released about two weeks out; note diets when booking because everyone eats the same menu. Dinner only, Wednesday to Monday 17:00-22:00, closed Tuesday.
Photo: Fou Fow Ramen
№ 07Elandsgracht · Ramen · €€7.6
Amsterdam's first ramen bar, a 2011 Chinatown pop-up that has held its corner of the Elandsgracht since 2015.
Every city with a ramen scene has the shop that started it, and in Amsterdam that shop is Fou Fow. Filmmaker Fow Pyng Hu, whose childhood nickname means crazy Fow in French, began ladling bowls in 2011 at a pop-up above toko Dun Yong on the Zeedijk, then took this corner of the Elandsgracht in early 2015. Parool's Hiske Versprille came by that January and gave it an 8, mostly for the way the noodles snap. A decade on the formula has not moved: broths simmered in-house for hours, noodles produced in Japan and shipped over, a short list of bowls that ends the discussion. The tonkotsu is the reference, pork bone cooked down to something silky rather than heavy. The tantanmen runs on Sichuan pepper and star anise under minced pork, with a fully vegan version nobody feels shortchanged by. The room is small and white, hung with Chinese lanterns, and takes no reservations. Half the city learned what ramen was here.
Order · Closed Monday, lunch 12:00-15:00, dinner 17:00-21:00, walk-in only. Doors at 17:00 or the tail end of lunch beat the queue; the two window tables on the corner are the seats to wait out.
Photo: Taka Ramen
№ 08Nieuwmarkt · Ramen, Japanese street food · €€7.4
Tokyo-trained Taka ladles lunch-only ramen on the top floor of Toko Dun Yong, four flights up with the Geldersekade below.
Taka came to the Netherlands in 2008 for an office job, decided the local ramen situation was unacceptable, and went back to Tokyo to train for three years before returning in 2012 to sell bowls from a stall at Waterlooplein. The stall became a counter on the top floor of Toko Dun Yong, then moved to a spot in the Jordaan for a stretch, before Taka came back for good to that same top floor of the Asian department store on the Stormsteeg, where you climb past crockery and kitchenware to a plain room with a view over the Geldersekade. The menu is short and daytime only: shouyu, miso and a properly spicy tan tan men at €16.95, a halal chicken bowl, a seafood bowl, and street food on the side, tori gyoza, karaage, takoyaki, yakisoba. Everything is made by the man himself, to his own exacting standard and nobody else's, which is exactly what you taste. Specials rotate, and a tsukemen with a fish, pork and chicken dipping broth turns up often enough to be worth asking about. Your Little Black Book has called Taka possibly the best ramen chef in the country; we would not go that far, but at these prices, with this view, the Saturday queue makes sense. A second branch runs near Gelderlandplein; this floor is the original.
Order · Daily 12:00-16:00, lunch only, no reservations. Come on a weekday before 13:00 or the small room fills; the €7.50 tori gyoza are the side order to keep, and ask about the tsukemen special before committing to a bowl.