But is it worth the queue?
In Amsterdam, crookies, cookies and fries all see long lines. Unsurprisingly, the food's not always worth the wait.
Amsterdam loves to queue for food.
These queues are Amsterdam personified: they’re diligently organised with bollards and bouncers, packed with tourists, and hated by pissy locals speeding by on bikes.
De 9 Straatjes is their spiritual home. The neighbourhood is snakes and ladders when it comes to eating. The line for Asian-inspired toastie spot, Chun, starts outside the shop, breaks, then restarts on a bridge further away. To make it from one part to the other you need to roll a 6, dodge the seagulls and not slip on the gooey wrapper left behind by some previous eater.
You can’t help but gawp. I see more people taking pictures of the queues than the pretty canals they obscure. So, in the grand tradition of investigative journalism, I present to you a fiercely independent, is-it-worth-it watchdog report of the most queue-heavy spots in Amsterdam.
And just so you know, I had to queue for all these. How I suffer.
Fabel Friet
Let’s start with the big hitter: Fabel Friet, a small shop in De 9 Straatjes that sells boxes of fries topped with pungent truffle mayo and hairy shavings of parmesan. If you haven’t seen the queue for Fabel – yes, you have. It goes around the equator twice. The queue is so long it’s decorated with signs telling you how long you’ll be waiting – twenty minutes – thirty minutes – you’ll die from old age first. The bouncers are showmen, they work the queue like a Friday night audience at a comedy club. When I asked one if he’d ever broken up a fight, he told me ‘they’re just fries, mate.’ Well, indeed.
On its website, Fabel Friet wants you to know it’s “committed to its immediate surroundings.” I read on to discover that means they clean up their own litter. Wow. Thanks guys. Presumably the signs slapped in every surrounding shop window loudly demanding DO NOT EAT IN FRONT OF OUR STORE are a sign of the deep, nurturing bond Fabel’s made with the local community.
All that said, the fries are actually quite nice. I think they could take more salt. I’m sure there are other fries shops that do better examples, but I haven’t researched them because frankly I don’t care enough.
For a tourist, it’s a very Amsterdammy stop. Fabel Friet knows this. The website is viewable in a whopping 17 languages. When our current world order inevitably collapses, perhaps Fabel Friet will be the best positioned global organisation to lead us towards a brighter future, one where we’re committed to our immediate surroundings.
❌ NOT WORTH THE QUEUE.
Lourens
First, the cronut. Then, the cruffin. Now, the… crookie.
The what now? The crookie! The mashup of a croissant and cookie that literally no-one asked for. It’s made at Lourens, a brightly lit corner bakery with a faux-Michelangelo ceiling and gilded Parisian details. It’d happily exist in a soulless Dubai mall.
Lourens is just north of De 9 Straatjes and claims it’s been open since 1952 – how strange then that in their first Instagram post, dated 2020, they said they were excited to open their doors. Perhaps 1952 is your anticipated blood glucose level after eating one crookie. It certainly felt that way.
So what actually is it? It’s a stale croissant, un-artfully rammed with semi-baked cookie dough. Neither of its two components are good. It’s as if in bringing together these two classic bakes, they forgot about the quality of each. ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ sort of vibes, if the Jack was Jack the Ripper out to bludgeon you to death with an outrageously dense pastry. In all seriousness though, it tasted like a toothache. Which is a shame, as some of their other pastries looked quite pretty.
❌ NOT WORTH THE QUEUE.
Chun
Next up, chump– sorry, Chun. I queued for thirty minutes. I started in the first queuing area on the bridge, then got ushered over to the second queuing area by a woman in a high-vis who could hardly contain her indifference to my rain-drenched existence. Once inside, I waited in the third queuing area by a little hatch window.
As soon as I got my takeout toastie, I bolted out of there. The toastie was – I’ll fully admit – a taste sensation. Asian-style milk loaf, probably made using a tangzhong, or roux, which seals in the bread’s moisture to give it a fluffy texture. Inside were perfectly cooked eggs and a sizzle of salty bacon. Some sweet mayo, which was unexpected but forward-thinking.
I especially enjoyed my branded moist towelette. Everything about Chun was branded, in fact. The box, the bag, the squiggle of sauce on top of the toastie. It smacked of consideration. The minimalist interiors (no photos allowed inside) were designed so that you have to focus on the quality of the food in your hands.
When I stumbled off the Chun-ride I only felt a little sheepish, not a whole lot. Sometimes you gotta join in the fun.
✅ WORTH THE QUEUE.
Van Stapele
Ah, Van Stapele, the cookie bakery so viral it’d fail an STI test. You only need to cycle past to appreciate the extent of its fame. Since moving to Rokin, the queue has grown thicker and longer. Over Christmas, it reached critical mass and a few astronomical bodies settled into orbit.
Never mind, the cookie is good. The white chocolate centre is oh-so-molten. The dough is just perfect. The cookie isn’t too large or too sickly, someone – presumably Vera van Stapele – knew that the key was to leave people feeling like they could have just one more.
‘There are better cookies in Amsterdam’ is something I hear a lot but if I’m honest, I’ve yet to find one. I think Louf’s could go toe-to-toe, but I’d need to double check that. Het Koekemannetje comes close but they’re slightly too rich for me.
Is it worth the queue? It depends on how despy you are to try them. I don’t think there’s a world in which you’d be disappointed – and, please, no future accusations of it being ‘just a cookie.’ Of course it’s just a cookie, what did you expect? A €100 note inside?
Put it this way: if the queue’s short, go for it. If it’s a 1500m trudge, I’d skip.
✅ ❌ WORTH/NOT WORTH THE QUEUE.
Winkel 43
Finally, the Winkel of all Winkels: Winkel 43. I’m guessing they spent so long perfecting the apple pie recipe that they ran out steam when naming the café.
Winkel 43 is a crush of tourists and locals, each one fighting for a table in the howling wind. I feel sorry for the poor server who has to continually confirm that, no, you can’t just sit down wherever you want and, yes, that really is the length of the queue. I also feel sorry for the kitchen because Winkel 43 does a whole menu of food but absolutely no one gives a sh*t – everyone comes for the pie then leaves.
Is it good? Yes. The crust is thick as wood, the apple chunks perfectly sized. It’s sweet but manageable, unlike other apple pies I’ve had that left me quivering with glucose-induced hallucinations.
But for the never-ending madness of the queue? I don’t think so. Not with markets either side and pesky gulls overhead who, true story, pooed on my brother-in-law just as we were about to tuck in. That’s a sauce no one wants on their apple pie.
❌ NOT WORTH THE QUEUE.
OK BYE!
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Such a hilarious read!!
For Winkel 43, the trick is to go super late. They are actually open until 1 a.m., and I've had many cheeky gin-and-tonics accompanied by slices of apple pie after midnight. No queuing required :)