Totally touristy and thus thoroughly uncool, this deserves a mention for its utterly unreconstructed 1970s interior. Forget ironic retro reinventions. This...

Popular with the neighbourhood's more affluent young people, there's a mod-retro feel here - lacquered walls, 1970s lamps, school chairs - and weekends are...

Listing crazily, this wooden-framed bar has been pleasing drinkers for decades, though the building itself has been around since 1695, when it began life as...

Neon tat to one side, trendy Wendys to the other; Eijlders is a cerebral alternative to both. A meeting place for the resistance during the war, it now has...

If you're burnt out by the Museum District, you can do far worse than recover at this smart locals' café set back from the main road. Although it calls...

A glass cabinet of trophies and trinkets and a jukebox give this bar an easygoing 1950s feel. It's an Amsterdam classic, by night full of bar-room...

Light from the enormous windows floods this delightful locals' café that's busy at all hours with students taking advantage of Wi-Fi, parents treating...

A slice of Paris on the Spui, waiters in long white aprons glide among tables, serving a huge range of drinks, (reasonably good) Dutch brasserie food and...

A dirty old rockers bar where musos, journos and everyone else who refuses to grow up gets smashed in one big, sloppy melée. The soundtrack is the entire...

So slick a bar comes as a surprise plonked canalside in an unremarkable residential area not far from the Vondelpark. Inside it's all blonde wood, cool,...

The grandness of this vast café on the corner of the Stopera complex belies the fact that it's modern: velvet drapes, Chesterfields and faux oil paintings...

This no-frills bar attracts older gays and straight locals who all enjoy the living room-like atmosphere. Before you know it you're chatting and boozing...

The Amsterdam Steambrewery Company has been making beer onsite for five years (though the building's history stretches back to the Middle Ages, when it was...

An old-fashioned drinking hole - complete with gritted floors - on one of the main tourist drags. Rough edges are smoothed out by sophisticated breakfasts...