Amsterdam is a sandwich city: from tiny lunchrooms to Italian schiacciata bars and Middle Eastern pitas, you can eat well between two slices of bread in almost every neighbourhood. This guide is for people who care more about a really good bite than about ticking off every place from social media. ​

Amsterdam’s food scene is less about a few “must‑see” places and more about neighbourhoods: markets, cafés, Middle Eastern kitchens, Surinamese takeaways and Indonesian restaurants all stitched together by canals and tram lines.

De Pijp has always been a ground‑floor‑business kind of neighbourhood: for more than a century, shopfronts and workshops have lined the same streets where people live above them. A barbershop and a sandwich bar sharing a pavement in this area is not a marketing gimmick – it’s a continuation of how the district was built.

De Pijp has been called the Quartier Latin of Amsterdam for decades, and by evening you'll understand why: the neighbourhood shifts from market stalls and lunch counters to a dense network of bars, brown cafés and wine bars that feels genuinely local rather than curated for tourists.

Hummus is now a staple in Amsterdam fridges and on brunch menus, but its roots lie in centuries of cooking around the Eastern Mediterranean, where chickpeas, sesame, lemon and garlic have long been everyday ingredients.

Shawarma – that stack of spinning meat shaved into pitas on countless street corners – is less a single recipe and more a cooking technique that travelled from the Ottoman Empire across the Levant and beyond.

Brisket, a tough cut from the cow’s chest, became the hallmark of Texas barbecue once cooks discovered that long, slow smoking could turn it into tender, smoky slices with a deep bark.

What many people overseas call “Israeli food” is in practice a mix of Jewish diasporic cuisines and regional Arab and Levantine cooking, all layered onto the ingredients and politics of the eastern Mediterranean.

Tucked just off the Albert Cuyp Market, Mezzave is a small spot in De Pijp serving hot sandwiches and pitas with Middle Eastern and Mediterranean influences to a mix of locals and visitors.