The European Bar Guide

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Days Out  (click below to read the following feature article)
A Day Out In Amsterdam: Brown Cafés & Jenever Houses

Amsterdam’s café culture is in most cases people’s only experience of pubgoing in Netherlands.

Having been to Rotterdam and Maastricht, we are still left with an overriding impression this is no bad thing. In general, the most dynamic, atmospheric bars, scenes and districts are to be found in Amsterdam. I recently compiled a central pub crawl of its brown cafés and jenever houses, which may well interest you – click HERE.

Amsterdam is prey to similar housing issues to many large Western cities, a form of social cleansing driving working class people out of the centre, partly aided and abetted by tourist demand.

This has unavoidably had an effect on bar scenes, with many of the more historic pubs occupied by tourists, above locals.

However, unlike many cities, Amsterdam – perhaps through being a port – is a welcoming, tolerant place that is used to dealing with foreigners and has long equipped itself with many languages and cherry-picked from cultures as diverse as Italian to Surinamese into its own.

Although Amsterdam’s famous bruin kroege/brown cafés have been dying out in their droves for decades, the tourist effect may also, in a perverse way end up saving many from extinction as they become not only places for a drink but buildings and businesses of unique historic interest.

What is the appeal? Well, just as London offers hundreds of distinctive corner pubs with Victorian/early 20th century stylings, Amsterdam’s equivalent is the brown café: simply designed, occasionally spit-n-sawdust venues with rickety tables and chairs, ceilings yellowed through decades of smoke, often interesting cabinets, bar features and hatches, rendered all the more charming by being forced into Amsterdam’s narrow, tall townhouses.

Yes, in Amsterdam it is not unheard of to climb up ladders to ascend to mezzanine levels, or visit pubs such as De Pilsener Club without any front-facing bar at all. Many of these venues owners recognise that one of the defining features of wood is gaining character as it ages, and so show severe restraint when it comes to additions or alterations. The weird and wonderful features of these pubs show that necessity (somewhere to drink) is the mother of invention.

The atmosphere of brown cafés tends to be brooding and dusky during the day, where anything from the rustle of a newspaper to a privately shared joke prickles the silence, and the dim light that pillars through often stained glass panels creates an almost chapel-like calm.

Cut to the evening hours when the same venue can easily transform into a loud, merry and fast-paced bar. The perhaps unheralded versatility of the brown café is in my opinion the key to its endurance. Most of all, however, the cosy sense of sanctuary and feeling that you are playing your part in a wider story elevates these places beyond the every day.

Furthermore, in a country not known for its spectacular climate, brown cafés such as Café Mulder offer the cosiest refuges from the bitter weather.

Outside of these temples of drinking, Netherlands also offers the Proeflokaal, a tasting house, which are often small venues dedicated to dispensing jenever and brandewijn. These are distinct venues all by themselves, offering a different format and formality to buying a beer in a brown café (though often beer still is available). The service in a Proeflokaal is genial, occasionally even verging onto banter, akin to Irish pubs. The various ephemera, bottles, barrels and cabinets make these venues very interesting in terms of décor.

You may also find the Eetcafé, a pleasingly literal name signifying that food is available. There is a considerable overlap between these places and some other Dutch pubs so it’s best not to get too hung up on this as a format. They can be just right to pop in for a drink, they might be a little too food-focused (much as can be said for some Czech Hospudky or the Slovenian Gostilna).

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Even on Carnevaal day, undoubtedly one of the most tedious and inexplicable festivals going, Maastricht the city feels very damn sensible. It’s a neat, tidy, well-organised and typically straight laced city of a kind you can expect from here up through the low countries to the Northern fringes of Scandinavia. There are a handful of impressive religious monuments and a centre that feels pleasant and harmonious rather than outright dramatic in any way. However, with close distance to Aachen in Germany and Liege in Belgium, this is a reasonable choice for a stop-off, and its situation near the very southern tip of the country means an opportunity to spy some regional differences between here and Amsterdam or Groningen, for example.

Maastricht’s bar scene is pretty good, with a handful of atmospheric old brown cafés in the centre, one or two traditional eetcafés too, and some fab neighbourhood venues if you are feeling up for exploring. The university injects some vitality into a quite middle-class town and the typically democratic approach to socialising in Netherlands means young and old can share a table, let alone a bar, without either feeling uncomfortable.

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After the destruction of World War II, Rotterdam took a markedly different approach to Amsterdam, embracing all things modern, and in effect granting a blank canvas to modernist architects to replan the city according to what was deemed to be contemporary needs. This has some wonderful benefits – public transport, walking, cycling are all neatly divided, and there is space to get around comfortably. The modern architecture works very well around the harbour setting, as most glass panelled hi-rise tends to be complimented by nearby water.

The café culture is not as distinct as Amsterdam, anywhere near so in fact, as Rotterdam continues to spurt off in directions it feels it needs to in order to establish its new identity. Quite a lot of old-time Netherlands is gone, and probably won’t be coming back within the borders of the city. Nevertheless, if you are interested in finding a good brown café, some good ones still exist in the Cool District, Delfshaven and the appropriately named Oude Noorden.

Outside of this, being a modern city, you can find more or less anything you are looking for, be that alternative bars, clubs, taprooms and all else corporate life has to offer.

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Few clues to Utrecht’s cute classical centre can be seen on arrival from the train station, with a modernist foyer linking to a large shopping complex. Once out of the other side however, it all seems to make sense. The mall provides space for corporate entities, allowing the genteel, quaint centre to be everything people are looking for. Low-rise, clean, bike-friendly and independent. Everything in the very centre is easily reachable on foot or bicycle with a canal ring and central canal system offering the most distinctive feature, with two levels, canal and street level each with shops and walkways. In terms of nightlife, Utrecht is not Amsterdam, nor is it trying to be, and the offerings reflect a slightly more demure, grown-up clientele. However, there are some charming local cafés and pubs, none more so than Café De Rat, a fantastic traditional corner café with pub cat, excellent range of local and craft ales, and a real community presence that feels both historic and relevant all at once.