VEGAMSTERDAM

This spring my partner and I took our first trip to the Netherlands, a gorgeous country we've both wanted to see for quite a while. (Yes I’m aware that it’s now mid-winter - blogging to a schedule is hard!) I'm not capable of a quick summation that would properly capture the charms of this beautiful, vegan burger-laden land, but suffice it to say that for its scenery, its atmosphere, and its plentiful plant-based options, we'll be back.

We landed in Amsterdam but spent our first day in Rotterdam, which is about twenty minutes away from Amsterdam's Schipol airport by train. This port city is incredibly easy to get around on foot, full of eye-catching architecture, including the spectacular Erasmus bridge. (I'd include a picture, but let's face it, google images would give you a better one).

Unfortunately, it was a Monday, and almost everything touristy in Rotterdam seems to be closed on Mondays. After a fairly thorough ramble through its pretty Springtime streets, we caught a quick train to the Hague, which has a beach! It's a pretty windswept and chilly beach at six o'clock in the evening in April, but beautiful nonetheless. I tried to befriend a dog, but he was having none of it. It was as we prepared to finish our sandy sojourn that the need for dinner struck, hard and fast. A quick google suggested that the best place to eat was likely to be De Vegetarische Snackbar, a vegetarian and vegan burger joint opposite Den Haag Hollands Spoor train station. We were hungry and we don't have a ton of vegan burger joints in Ireland so we were excited to try it out.

I got the Bacon Burger meal, while my partner chose a seafood burger (both vegan obviously). Mine was tasty - the imitation bacon was definitely the star of the show. My partner's seafood burger fell a little flat. Both meals were definitely a bit pricey for what they were - satisfying without really shining - but the fact that we could easily get two specialty vegan burgers despite having had a very spontaneous day and not really having planned out what we were doing really highlights the availability of vegan food in Dutch cities.

Bacon burger from De Vegetarische Snackbar in Den Haag

Our schedule called for us to go to Amsterdam by the following evening, but we spent the early part of Tuesday in Delft, the incredibly charming and picturesque town where Dutch master Johannes Vermeer spent his life. Wandering the cobbled streets along the town's many canals was one of the most charming parts of the trip, as was having a lovely coffee in one of its many cafes. We didn't eat anything in Delft but I'd recommend it to anyone for a visit.

After arriving in Amsterdam and checking into our Airbnb, we headed to the Meatless District, a vegan restaurant on Bilderdijkstraat in West Amsterdam, which came highly recommended online. The restaurant is elegant and hip, the staff are super friendly, and most importantly the food is absolutely gorgeous. I had the MD Burger, a seitan patty served with salad, pickles, avocado, tomatoes, red onion, and the restaurant's own burger sauce. It was a really gorgeous burger, one of the best I've had, and beautifully filling. My partner had the similarly delicious Sunshine Bowl, which consisted of cold marinated noodles with smoked tofu, kimchi, pickled daikon (this is a type of radish, and yes I had to look it up), sugar snaps, purple cabbage, lotus root chips and black sesame seeds. She wasn't sure about cold noodles when she ordered but we both felt it was absolutely fantastic (though I didn't regret ordering the burger - a theme that will recur).

For dessert she got Sticky Stuff (that's the name of it, not a failure of my powers of description), which is sticky toffee pudding, plus caramel plums with pear and vanilla ice cream. It was stellar, but not (in my opinion) as good as my Fat Lion - two scoops of rich chocolate ice cream, the best I've had as a vegan (so much so that I briefly had a panic while writing this and had to confirm that the restaurant actually is 100% vegan - it is) with a chocolate sauce and fried oreo wrapped in dough... I mean, Meatless District was one of the highlights of our trip, but fried oreo wrapped in dough was one of the highlights of my life.

The following morning was one of the more profoundly moving of my life, as we visited both the Anne Frank house and museum on Prinsengracht, and the memorial to LGBT people killed during the Holocaust (The Homomonument) around the corner on Keizersgracht. Facing and contemplating these horrors from the past can never be described as exactly positive, but it's an experience I'd recommend to anyone nonetheless.

We grabbed lunch a four-minute walk away in the lovely Vegabond, a cafe and vegan shop with all kinds of vegan essentials - one of the main vegan outlets, in my opinion, that we're missing in Dublin. The food was ambitious but didn't quite deliver on its promise. At the end of the day that's one of the great things about Amsterdam - there are so many good-to-great vegan meals out there that you don't feel the need to say everything you encounter is the best thing you've ever had. I had a vegan Brie sandwich with walnuts, rocket and an artificial sweetener a bit like honey. The taste was pretty good but the cheese definitely wasn't as flavourful as traditional Brie - a reminder that sometimes you're better off going with the meal that's obviously made of vegetables rather than the one that imitates omnivorous food. My partner had some pretty tasty summer rolls, and we shared a homemade vegan snickers bar for dessert - not extraordinary, but perfectly nice if you're in the area (which, if you're visiting Amsterdam, you almost certainly will be at some stage), and super handy for vegan grocery shopping.

We grabbed an early evening meal in the beautiful and relaxed De Waghals, a vegetarian restaurant near the Rijksmuseum gallery. There were two vegan mains, so naturally we each ordered one. I got the soba noodles with mushroom miso sauce and Japanese 7-herb powder, marinated tofu, spinach, peanuts and cucumber, which was fantastic, a real taste sensation. My partner had stir-fried bok choy, mango and coriander salsa, roasted chickpeas, white rice and a coconut and lime leaf sauce - very subtle, and not quite as explosively tasty as my dish but certainly delicious. My notes fail me in figuring out what we had for dessert, but again there were two flavourful vegan options and we left absolutely delighted with what we'd had. We spent the rest of the evening rambling through Vondelpark, a gloriously verdant park that really does feel apart from the city, even as it's clearly used by many cycling commuters as their route home. We walked the full three kilometres through it, which was fun but pretty tiring at that time of night. 

The following day we visited the Rijksmuseum itself, a gallery absolutely crammed with magnificent paintings. A particular pleasure was seeing in person the Vermeer painting The Little Street, which depicts a part of Delft (Vlamingstraat) we had seen only days before. There's a huge amount in the Rijksmuseum, and like most of the great galleries you could spend more than a single day there, but you'll get value from however long you spend there.

After my partner accidentally soaked herself in a timer-activated fountain at the Rijksmuseum (one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, and I say that with love) we found Delicious Deshima just across the canal, a lovely Japanese-influenced vegetarian cafe with beautiful vegan options. Again my notes fail me on what exactly we had, but I’d recommend it if you’re at the Rijksmuseum and looking for a gorgeous vegan lunch.

That night we ate at the Vegan Junk Food Bar Restaurant at Marie Heinekenplein. The VJFB is a chain with a few locations, and it was really encouraging as a vegan to see how popular it clearly is - the restaurant was completely jammed, even on a midweek evening. Sometimes I did wish that the Netherlands' vegan scene was a bit less focused on junk food, but there's no denying that the VJFB knows how to do junk food. I had the Daddy McChik'n, a double plant-based Chik’n burger with vegan cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and vegan mayo sauce. It was absolutely fantastic, chewy and flavourful. I would argue it probably doesn't need to be a double burger, but if you're looking to absolutely gorge yourself on incredible vegan junk food, look no further. My partner had the Weed Bites (despite name and location, these are seaweed rather than...y'know…weed), which were really deliciously fishy (and a bit lighter than the burger I had). 

That night we took a boat tour down Amsterdam's everpresent canals. I always think this is a great idea in any city with canals because it shows you parts of the city you'd never have noticed. In Amsterdam especially, many of the pavements are narrow and bikes zooming past make you hug the sides of the streets, so you rarely take the time to look up at the gorgeous upper floors of the old residential buildings that line the canals. From the boat, these angles become more natural, and you can also see houseboats up close, as well as the spectacular Amsterdam harbour.

The next day was our final full day in The Netherlands and also happened to be Koningsdag, its national day of celebration for its king. We were happy to see some of the party but didn't really want to do an all-day celebration, so we left in the morning to go to Keukenhof, the spectacular botanic gardens and flower fields about an hour's journey from Amsterdam. Spring is the time to visit, with the tulips in full bloom. The rich colour combinations, delicate curves and slopes, and spectacular patterns are simply intoxicating. I've been to many gorgeous gardens before, but I've never seen anything remotely like Keukenhof. It's simply something you have to see to appreciate, and I definitely recommend that you try to visit the Netherlands in springtime if you have the chance.

We made tracks back to Amsterdam to catch the tail end of Koningsdag. It had been described to us as a bit like St Patrick's Day, but I suppose the Dutch are just a lot classier than the Irish because it really was a hell of a lot more sedate. (Disclaimer: we did see three portaloos in a public lake in the Vondelpark, so not all Dutch people kept their chill). It was a bit loud and there were absolutely hordes of people on the streets, but generally things were fine. A lot of things aren't open on Koningsdag, including Meatless District, where we had planned to round out our trip. However, our server at VJFB had told us that they were open on Konigsdag so we headed to their Staringplein location, more of a burger bar with a slightly more limited menu. We sat outside and enjoyed the meal perfectly, despite a weird older English man having a blow-up fight with his Dutch girlfriend just down the bench from us. This location doesn't serve alcohol, unlike the Marie Heinekenplein spot, but the food was just as good and provided a perfect end to our Dutch vegan experience.

All in all, we found the Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, to be a really fantastic vegan holiday destination; almost everywhere you go has vegan meals on the menu, and a quick google reveals great places easily reachable. My only complaint would be that the specifically vegan places we found seemed to be quite focused on the junk food end of the spectrum - an option that definitely has its place, but that over a week-long trip can wear slightly thin. We both felt a little unhealthy by the end of the trip despite a week of walking virtually everywhere, and I would maybe put more effort into finding non-vegan restaurants with vegan options so we could have a more diverse selection of meals if I were to go back. With that said, there's no way I could be in the same city as such exceptional plant-based burgers and stay away forever!