Best-of list · City Guide
The best bars in the Jordaan, Amsterdam — hidden gems, canal-side brown cafés, and intimate cocktail rooms in Amsterdam's most characterful neighbourhood.
The short answer
10 ranked rooms follow. How we picked is at the end of this guide.
The best bars in the Jordaan are spread across one of Amsterdam's most densely atmospheric neighbourhoods — a grid of narrow canals and 17th-century houses that manages to feel genuinely residential even as it has become one of the city's most visited areas. The best bars jordaan amsterdam visitors consistently overlook are the ones down the side streets off Westerstraat and along the smaller canals, away from the more obvious terrace bars on Prinsengracht. That is where the neighbourhood's actual drinking culture lives.
The Jordaan rewards walking. The neighbourhood is small enough that you can cover most of it on foot in an hour, and the density of brown cafés and hidden cocktail rooms means that moving slowly and looking carefully is a better strategy than following any fixed route.
How we picked
The Jordaan is our recommendation for anyone spending their first evening in Amsterdam. It covers the full range of what makes the city's bar culture distinctive — from the jenever house tradition at Café de Tuin to the cocktail precision at Vesper, with Café Nol's sing-along as the experience that no other European city can offer. Walk slowly, stop wherever looks right, and expect to end the evening in a place you did not plan to visit.
Sofia covers European bar culture with a focus on the Netherlands and Scandinavia. She has spent enough evenings in the Jordaan to know which brown café has the best jenever and which canal terrace catches the light correctly at dusk.
Last reviewed 2026-05-05 · The editors recheck hours and closures against current local coverage.