Café het Paleis

Café het Paleis is an all-day Amsterdam café at Paleisstraat 16, a short walk west of Dam Square and directly behind the Royal Palace. It serves Dutch café staples and international dishes from mid-morning until late, with a small terrace on a busy pedestrian-and-bike street in the middle of the Centrum district. If you want a sit-down lunch, a coffee stop between museums, or a relaxed dinner without booking weeks ahead, this is a practical option in one of the most touristed parts of the city.

Café het Paleis at a glance

Address	Paleisstraat 16, 1012 RB Amsterdam, Netherlands
Phone	+31 20 626 0600
Neighbourhood	Centrum, behind the Royal Palace and Dam Square
Hours (per the café)	Sunday to Thursday 10:00–22:00, kitchen until 21:00; Friday and Saturday 10:00–00:00, kitchen until 22:00
Type	All-day café and eetcafé: breakfast, lunch, drinks, dinner
Facilities	Full bar, table service, outdoor seating, reservations accepted, free Wi-Fi, step-free access reported
Traveller rating	4.0 out of 5 on Tripadvisor from roughly 267 reviews
Price level	Mid-range for central Amsterdam; reviewers describe prices as reasonable for the location

Hours are the one detail worth double-checking before you go. The café’s own contact page lists a 10:00 opening, while several third-party directories still show 09:30 and much later closing times carried over from older listings. Call ahead if you are planning an early breakfast or a late-night visit, and treat the kitchen closing time as the real deadline if you want food rather than only drinks.

What the café is actually like

The room is a fairly typical Amsterdam brown-café interior adapted for eating: wooden tables, a long bar, warm lighting, and enough space between the front windows and the back of the room that you can usually find a quieter table away from the door. Reviewers consistently single out the service rather than the decor, describing staff who stay friendly when the room fills up and who help with menu choices. Because Paleisstraat is narrow and busy, the atmosphere depends heavily on where you sit: the window and terrace tables are lively and noisy, while the interior tables are calmer.

The Dutch word for the feeling most visitors are chasing here is gezelligheid, which covers coziness, warmth, and good company at the same time. It is a genuine feature of Amsterdam café culture rather than marketing language, and it explains why locals treat cafés like this one as an extension of the living room rather than a quick refuelling stop. Nobody will rush you out after your coffee.

The menu and what to order

The kitchen covers Dutch café classics alongside standard international café dishes, and the dinner list is deliberately short. That is worth knowing in advance: guests have reported dishes selling out on busier evenings, so have a second choice in mind if you arrive late.

• Broodje kroket, a deep-fried ragout croquette served on bread with mustard, is one of the most-praised items in visitor reviews and one of the most authentically Dutch things on the menu.
• Uitsmijter, the Dutch open-faced fried-egg breakfast with ham or cheese on bread, is the standard morning order at cafés of this type.
• Sandwiches and toasted items, including a tuna melt that reviewers have called out specifically, cover the lunch trade.
• Daily and seasonal specials change through the year, so ask what the kitchen is running that day rather than ordering blind from the printed list.
• Apple pie with whipped cream is the standard Dutch café dessert and appears here as it does across the city, but it is not a widely reviewed signature dish, so order it as a solid classic rather than a destination in itself.
• There is a full bar, which makes the café workable as a drinks-only stop after the kitchen closes.

Best time to visit

Mid-afternoon, roughly between 15:00 and 17:00, is the easiest window. The lunch trade has cleared, the dinner service has not started, and you have a reasonable chance of a table without waiting even in high season. Weekday afternoons are noticeably calmer than weekend afternoons.

Time of day	What to expect
Morning, from 10:00	Quietest period of the day. Good for breakfast and coffee before Dam Square and the Royal Palace open to visitors.
Lunch, 12:00–14:30	Busiest daytime stretch, with a mix of shoppers, office workers, and visitors. Expect a short wait for terrace tables.
Afternoon, 15:00–17:00	The sweet spot. Full kitchen service, easier seating, and afternoon light through the front windows.
Dinner, 17:30–21:00	Table service dinner with a short menu. Reserve on Friday and Saturday, and order before the kitchen closes.
Late, after 22:00 Friday and Saturday	Drinks only once the kitchen shuts. Useful for a nightcap after a concert or a canal walk.

Seasonally, the terrace is the deciding factor. From roughly April to September the outdoor tables are the main draw and the hardest to get, especially on sunny weekends. From October onward the interior does the work, and the café functions as a warm break from cold, wet weather, which is exactly what central Amsterdam cafés are for. Avoid arriving without a reservation on King’s Day on 27 April and during Pride weekend in early August, when the whole Centrum is at capacity.

How to get to Paleisstraat 16

Paleisstraat runs west from Dam Square along the south side of the Royal Palace, connecting Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal to the canal ring. Nearly every visitor arrives from Amsterdam Centraal, and walking is usually the fastest option.

1. On foot from Amsterdam Centraal: walk south down Damrak for about 10 to 15 minutes to Dam Square, keep the Royal Palace on your right, and turn into Paleisstraat. The café is a few doors along on the left.
2. By tram: the Paleisstraat and Dam stops sit within a minute or two of the door, and Moovit lists tram lines 1, 12, and 17 as serving Paleisstraat, with line 2 also running through Dam Square from Centraal. Any tram that stops at Dam or Spui leaves you a short walk away.
3. By metro: line 54 is listed among the nearby services, and Rokin station on the North-South line is roughly a five-minute walk east.
4. By bike: this is the local default, but note that Paleisstraat is narrow, shared with trams and pedestrians, and has limited legal bike parking. Use the racks around Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal rather than leaning your bike against the café.
5. By car: do not. This is deep inside the Centrum, with environmental-zone restrictions, almost no parking, and some of the highest hourly rates in the Netherlands. A taxi or Uber drop-off works, but expect the driver to stop on a nearby street rather than at the door.

Practical tips before you go

• Reserve for weekend dinner. The café takes reservations, and the dinner room is small relative to demand in this location.
• Bring a debit card with Maestro or a contactless card. Many Dutch cafés are cashless or card-preferred, and some do not accept foreign credit cards, so do not rely on cash alone or on a single card type.
• Check the kitchen closing time, not the closing time. The kitchen stops an hour before the doors do, which catches out visitors who plan a 21:30 dinner.
• Ask about the specials. The short dinner list means the daily dishes are often the most interesting thing available.
• Sit inside if you want conversation. The terrace faces a busy pedestrian and cycling street, which is good for people-watching and poor for quiet.
• A few words of Dutch go a long way, though staff speak English fluently. “Dank je wel” for thank you and “lekker” for delicious are enough.
• Tipping is optional in the Netherlands. Rounding up or leaving 5 to 10 percent for good table service is normal and generous.

What to combine with your visit

The café’s main practical advantage is its position. The Royal Palace and the Nieuwe Kerk are on Dam Square, less than two minutes away, and the Nine Streets shopping district begins about five minutes west along the canals. Anne Frank House is a 10-minute walk northwest, and the Begijnhof courtyard and the Amsterdam Museum area sit a similar distance south. Booking a timed-entry attraction and using this café as the meeting point before or after is a sensible way to structure a central Amsterdam morning.

Frequently asked questions