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Some cafés flash their designer credentials – and attract a suitably hip and trendy crowd.

Open since 1670, this historic brown café, with its lefty past and church pews, was a regular haunt of radical journalists, writers and intellectuals in the Provo-fuelled 1960s.

The dark wooden interior and tang of cigar smoke in the air are the very essence of the classic “brown café”. Pink-faced old men enjoying one too manyjenevers , smart young professionals on the way home from work, friends meeting up for beer and a gossip, populate this cheery Amsterdam institution (see Hoppe).

Enjoy excellent New Dutch cuisine in this friendly relaxed resaurant with outside tables.

Aficianados of kitsch will love the style of this perfectly pink restaurant. Ask for the corner mattress when booking, or a table with its own water fountain.

Sip a champagne cocktail on the canal-side terrace, or show off your latest designer wear to the fashionable crowd inside one of Amsterdam’s most popular cafés. Piles of magazines and intriguing artworks help while away the time (see Het Land van Walem).

The famous and beautiful of Amsterdam fill their tummies and empty their wallets here. The food is a delicate fusion of French with international cuisine.

Crystal chandeliers, an elegant courtyard garden and genteel staff contribute to an atmosphere of timeless chic at this top, centrally located fish restaurant. Slip your lips around succulent oysters, revel in a classicbouillabaisse or go for something more adventurous, like roast monkfish with wild mushroom pasta, or flappingly fresh fish with an explosion of Thai spices.

One of the hippest and friendliest bars in the area, yet decidedly unpretentious.