The Amsterdam Breakfast Crawl: Six Stops, One Morning

(Linda, again.)

Amsterdam has the best breakfast scene of any European city, and we are prepared to fight anyone who says it's Paris. We've done two trips here (Alex's birthday in 2022, weekend in March 2025), and on the second trip we noticed how dramatically the breakfast game had levelled up.

Six stops. Pace yourself.

Stop 1 (8am): Patisserie Kuyt

An appelschnitt and a coffee. The classic Dutch apple slice, baked that morning, drowning in cinnamon. €4.50 for the slice, €3.50 for a long coffee. Opens at 7:30am, the appelschnitten come out hot. Eat standing at the counter watching the cyclists on the Reguliersgracht. This is your warm-up.

Stop 2 (9am): Grammes

The find from our 2025 trip. Tiny natural-wine breakfast spot in De Pijp, nine seats at the counter. Three options that change weekly. Our visit: smoked mackerel with horseradish creme and pickled red onion on rye. €14 per plate. €5 for an oat-milk flat white. Genuinely one of the best breakfast dishes we'd eaten anywhere.

Arrive 9am sharp. The nine counter seats fill by 9:15.

Stop 3 (10am): Eetsalon van Dobben

The classic. Founded 1945. Red leather banquettes, white tile walls, brass coat hooks. The breakfast move: broodje halfom (slow-cooked pickled beef and corned beef on a roll, with mustard) and black coffee. €7 for the sandwich.

You sit next to a 70-year-old Amsterdammer in tweed reading the morning paper and feel like you've gone back forty years. The kroket (deep-fried croquette of meat ragout in breadcrumb shell) on a buttered roll is the cult favourite. Cash only.

Stop 4 (11am): The Hoxton Amsterdam

Lotti's breakfast: the sourdough toast platter with three Dutch cheeses (Beemster, Old Amsterdam, herb-coated farmhouse) and smoked salmon with fennel salad. About €20. Open to non-guests.

The Hoxton is the hotel we'd pick for Amsterdam. We did three nights in March 2025 for €265/night. The canal-side location, the courtyard breakfast room, and the staff who genuinely want to be there. Full Hoxton review →

Stop 5 (12pm): Cafe Remouillage

A brown cafe (traditional Amsterdam tavern, walls stained brown by 100 years of smoking). Bitterballen (small fried croquette balls, €4), pickled herring on toast, and ossenworst (raw spiced beef sausage, sliced thin, on rye, €6). Two beers at €4.50 each.

Brown cafes are a protected Amsterdam genre. About 250 left. Cafe Remouillage is one of the better ones.

Stop 6 (1pm): BAK

The proper sit-down. BAK is a small-plates place in the docklands: open kitchen, sixty seats, fixed-menu lunch at €45/person for four courses. The 2025 standouts: poached cod with smoked beurre blanc, celeriac soup with hazelnut praline. Wine pairing €25 extra. Total: €140 for two.

Book two weeks ahead. If BAK is full, Cafe De Klepel is the alternative (same area, €40 for the lunch menu).

Amsterdam breakfast crawl cost

Done in five hours. Two of you: €284 for one breakfast crawl, the cost of one fancy dinner anywhere.