Eating in Amsterdam

 

My son Caleb is quite the “foodie”, so we did some fun food things during our trip.

Of course, there are bakeries and little pastry shops everywhere, just like all of Europe.  I honestly don’t know how all the Dutch stay so thin with so many carbs around - all so delicious!

This is a FEBO.  Caleb has some friends from The Netherlands who told him to try these little shops that have just sandwiches or fries all in these little mailbox things.  You just tap your card for the column/kind of snack or sandwich you want and then it unlocks and you grab it and go.  We went for lunch one day, but it was not during the peak hours, so you just had to go to the counter and order, there wasn’t anything in the mailboxes.  The menu was pretty limited, just hamburgers, cheeseburgers, etc. But it is a fun idea and interesting business model.  We did see FEBOs that were quite crowded at other times on our trip.

One of Caleb’s ideas was to take a walking food tour.  So we spent several hours walking around the city, with our host getting various traditional Dutch foods for us to try.  Along the way, he told us about different points of interest and things about living in Amsterdam.  He had a friend visiting him who was also a local and came along just for fun.  We thought it really added to our experience to have two of them to bounce off each other to answer our questions, expand on the other’s answers, etc. Come along and see some of the things we tried.  I’m proud to say I tried everything!

This is raw herring.  It is a very popular here.  Usually it is not cut up into pieces, they pick it up by the tail, dip it in the cut up onion (which actually automatically sticks to it) and then throw their head back and swallow it whole.  Then they finish with the pickle. I did try one piece - complete with the onion and pickle.  It was not as bad as I anticipated, but I didn’t have any more.

Can you see Caleb behind me? He is taking the photo above…lol.  At one point in our tour it started pouring so we did get wet, but we powered through and the storm was brief.

There are stroopwaffles.  They are a common snack in Germany too.  However they originated in the Netherlands (I think maybe even in Amsterdam).  Usually they are packaged and are much like a cookie.  The crispy waffly like exterior has a middle layer of syrup, cinnamon and other yummy-ness.  These, were from an official shop that makes them warm and still gooey.  It is SO wonderful!  Way better than the packaged kind at the grocery store!

Fries are a popular Amsterdam treat.  They eat them with mayonnaise, not ketchup.  They were very excited about how these are cut from potatoes, not processed, and you can still see the skin on it, etc.  I have had better fries.  I feel like American does this pretty well.  I mean, have you tried the hand cut fries from Kira’s Flip Side Grill in Bluffton…???

The next thing were these little fried balls - they had beef and something else in them.  Next to the stroopwaffles, these were my favorites!  You were supposed to eat them with the mustard.  I loved them plain.  They were hot, right from the fryer.

Caleb described them as fried balls of beef stew.  That was actually a pretty good description, I thought.

Next were these little dishes of ice cream with some sort of cream in the bottom.

Last on the food tour were mini Dutch pancakes sprinkled generously with powdered sugar.  They were warm and wonderful!

Other than our food tour, we did explore lots of other fun food!

If you ever see this chain bakery in Europe…RUN to it!  We ate breakfast and lunch there one day and everything we got was simply AMAZING!!!

It is common to find bakeries with this kind of spread.  I’m sure there are many good ones, but we just fell in love with this one.  Every item looked perfect and tasted divine.

Savoring my raspberry tart thing…ahhh…for breakfast.

Our lunch.  Focaccia bread with fresh meats, cheeses, tomatoes and greens and then different tarts for dessert.  We split them in half and shared.

Every place you go has a little cafe to sit and eat a pastry or get a cafe.  At the Rijksmuseum, we took a little break at the cafe and had this hummus plate.

Walking home from a buy day of sightseeing, we got these pitas with shrimp. I think it may have been Mediterranean… I was really tired at this point and not really sure what I was eating.  But I liked it.

I think I’ve mentioned this before in this blog, but we did get Indonesian food our first day.  We paid something like $18 for a box of all different dishes.  I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed it!

That is the summary of our food in Amsterdam!  Our Air B&B hosts also had some little treats for us at our room.  We ate all the popsicles and ice cream.  I also discovered Tony’s chocolate - a fair trade chocolate company that is really popular here and very good.