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Bar-Hopping Guide: Amsterdam Jordaan
Bar-Hopping
Amsterdam
Bar-Hopping Guide:
Amsterdam's Jordaan
By Sofia Reeves
·
April 1, 2026
·
8 min read
The Jordaan is Amsterdam at its most compressed and most itself. Narrow canal houses, bicycles propped against every available surface, and a bar on every other corner that looks, from the outside, as if it has been there since at least 1880. Some of them have. This neighbourhood west of the Prinsengracht was a working-class district for 300 years before it became one of the city's most sought-after addresses, and that layered history shows in its bars.
This guide covers 8 bars and 4 hours of walking, starting at Noordermarkt in the north and ending near the Melkweg in the south. The route follows the main canal streets but ducks into the connecting cross-streets, called dwarsstraten, where the best independent bars hide from the tourist trail. Our editors walked it on a Wednesday and a Saturday evening. Both nights rewarded patience.
"Amsterdam's brown cafes are not museums. They are living rooms with beer taps, and the Jordaan has more of them per square metre than anywhere else on earth."
Stop 1: Start at Noordermarkt — The Brown Cafe Foundation
Cafe Nol
Westerstraat
$
Opens 10am
One of the last authentic Jordaan cafes, running since the 1950s and genuinely unchanged in spirit since then. Regulars call it the "temple of Amsterdam brown cafe culture." Accordion music on weekends. Dutch lager on tap at proper prices. The interior is cramped, warm, and stained with decades of tobacco (the smell, not the smoke, which is long gone). Order a Heineken and a genever chaser. This is how you start the night.
Cafe Chris
Bloemstraat
$
Opens 3pm
Opened in 1624, Cafe Chris is one of Amsterdam's oldest bars and the place where the workers who built the Westerkerk came to collect their wages and drink them away the same afternoon. The space is tiny, seating perhaps 30. The menu runs to Dutch beers, jenever in every variation, and bar snacks that have not changed since anyone can remember. Arrive early or accept standing room only.
Stop 2: The Craft Beer Turn on Elandsgracht
Amsterdam's craft beer scene arrived later than London or Berlin's but built fast. The Jordaan has 6 dedicated craft beer bars within a 10-minute walk, most of them opened between 2012 and 2018, and all of them maintaining the brown cafe's principle of comfort over performance.
Gollem's Proeflokaal
Overtoom
$$
Opens 4pm
Gollem is the original Amsterdam craft beer bar, opened in 1974 when Belgian trappist ales were still a novelty outside the abbey walls. The tap list runs to 14 rotating Dutch and Belgian drafts, the bottle list to over 200. The staff know every beer and will steer you correctly. Order whatever is on cask that evening and something Belgian to compare. The bar fills after 6pm on weekdays and stays full until close.
Stop 3: Cocktails in the Cross-Streets
The Jordaan's dwarsstraten — the short connecting streets between the main canals — contain some of Amsterdam's best small cocktail bars. Most have under 30 seats. None are easy to find on the first visit. That is precisely the point.
Tales and Spirits
Lijnbaanssteeg
$$$
Opens 6pm
The most awarded cocktail bar in Amsterdam, and one of the few that genuinely deserves the attention. The menu changes seasonally around a narrative theme (recent editions have covered Dutch colonial spice trade history and the city's golden age printing houses). 20 seats. Reservations recommended Thursday through Saturday. The bar team includes four alumni of London's Dandelyan, which tells you all you need to know about the technical ambition here.
Door 74
Reguliersdwarsstraat
$$$
Opens 8pm
Amsterdam's original speakeasy, accessed by calling a phone number listed on an unmarked door at number 74. The format was novel when it opened in 2009 and has since influenced a dozen other hidden bars across the city. Inside: 16 seats, a changing menu of 20 drinks built around seasonal Dutch produce, and a team that has been here long enough to have trained half the city's bartenders. Reservation mandatory.
Stop 4: Late Night on the Leidsekade
The southern edge of the Jordaan bleeds into Leidseplein, Amsterdam's main entertainment square and the place most guidebooks send tourists. Avoid the square itself. Instead, walk the Leidsekade canal side, where a strip of bars faces the water and the energy is local rather than performative. The best cocktail bars in Amsterdam are increasingly concentrated in this corridor.
Paradiso (Bar Side)
Weteringschans
$$
Opens 7pm on show nights
The main room at Paradiso hosts concerts. The bar side, accessible separately on non-sellout show nights, is a legitimate drinking destination in its own right. A former church with 4-metre ceilings, good cocktails, and a crowd that skews creative and music-literate. Check the gig calendar before arriving, as the bar entrance policy changes depending on the night's show. One of the
best live music bars in Amsterdam when the room is open to the public.
Hiding in Plain Sight
Rapenburg
$$$
Opens 9pm
A small bar that takes its name literally: it is located on a canal street that most Amsterdam visitors never find, three blocks from the tourist arteries. The menu rotates monthly and includes 8 signature cocktails plus a longer seasonal list. The room seats 24. The music stays at a level where conversation is possible. Order the house negroni variation and ask about the spirit of the month.
Practical Notes for the Jordaan Route
The Jordaan is walkable in its entirety. From Noordermarkt in the north to the Leidsekade in the south is roughly 1.5 kilometres. Allow 20 minutes between each stop for walking and the inevitable pauses to look at things. The neighbourhood is most active between 7pm and midnight on weeknights, and from 6pm onward on weekends.
Cycling is the obvious alternative, but cycling and bar-hopping do not mix in Amsterdam. The city takes its bike culture seriously and its road safety seriously. Walk. Amsterdam rewards pedestrians more than any city in Northern Europe.
For the broader picture of Amsterdam's bar scene across all neighbourhoods, or to explore the hidden gem bars beyond the Jordaan, our full city guide covers De Pijp, Oost, and the Noord ferry scene as well. The best bars in Amsterdam editorial gives our current consensus picks across all districts.
Sofia Reeves
Senior European Editor
Sofia covers Europe's bar scene from a base in London, with quarterly reporting trips to Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, and the Iberian Peninsula. She has been writing about bars for 11 years and insists that the best bar in any city is never the one that won an award last year.
