Café Chris is the oldest café in the Jordaan, open at Bloemstraat 42 since 1624, and it is a drinking bar rather than a restaurant. It opens at 15:00 every day, closes at 01:00 Monday to Thursday, runs to 02:00 on Friday and Saturday, and shuts early at 21:00 on Sunday. There is no printed menu and no kitchen: the tap list is short, the snacks are bar snacks, and the house speciality is a kopstootje, a brimful glass of jenever with a beer beside it. Bring cash. The single most photographed thing in the building is the men’s toilet, whose flush chain hangs on the wall outside the cubicle, in full view of the bar.
Café Chris at a glance
| Address | Bloemstraat 42, 1016 LC Amsterdam (Jordaan) |
| Opened | 1624, as a beer house for the men building the Westerkerk |
| Claim to fame | Oldest café in the Jordaan (not the oldest in Amsterdam) |
| Type | Brown café (bruine kroeg) — drinks and bar snacks, no kitchen |
| Food | Bar snacks only, bitterballen and cheese; no meals, no printed menu |
| Signature order | Kopstootje: jenever filled to the rim, pilsner alongside |
| Payment | Bring euros in cash — do not count on a card working |
| Reservations | Not taken; walk in and find a spot |
| Nearest tram | Westermarkt (trams 13 and 17), about 4 minutes on foot |
| Phone | +31 20 624 5942 |
What are Café Chris’s opening hours?
Café Chris opens at 15:00 seven days a week and never opens in the morning. Sunday is the day that catches people out: the bar closes at 21:00, four hours earlier than a normal weeknight, so a Sunday evening plan that starts at 21:30 will not work.
| Day | Opens | Closes |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | 15:00 | 01:00 |
| Tuesday | 15:00 | 01:00 |
| Wednesday | 15:00 | 01:00 |
| Thursday | 15:00 | 01:00 |
| Friday | 15:00 | 02:00 |
| Saturday | 15:00 | 02:00 |
| Sunday | 15:00 | 21:00 |
A note on why this is worth stating plainly: several listings sites publish a 12:00 opening for Café Chris, and at least one puts Sunday closing at midnight. Those do not match the hours the bar itself keeps or the hours carried by the venue listings that were updated in July 2026. If you want the quiet version of this room, arrive between 15:00 and 18:00 on a weekday. Weekend evenings fill the place, and it is small.
What is on the menu at Café Chris?
There is no menu, in the sense most people mean. Café Chris publishes no food or drinks list online and hands out no card at the table. What exists is a short tap selection, a shelf of spirits, and a handful of snacks that come out of a fryer. Anyone arriving expecting dinner should eat first.
The beer choice is deliberately ordinary. Amsterdam’s In Your Pocket guide puts it bluntly, calling the selection “nothing special” next to the curiosities of the building itself, which is the point of a brown café. You are not here for a 30-tap craft board. You order a pilsner, or you order the thing that makes this kind of bar what it is.
| What you can order | What it is |
|---|---|
| Dutch pilsner | The default. A short tap list, poured with the two-finger head the Dutch expect |
| Jenever | Dutch malt-wine gin, the ancestor of London dry gin, and a 17th-century drink in a 17th-century room. Served in a tulip glass filled to the brim |
| Kopstootje | Literally “little headbutt”: a jenever and a beer together. The house move |
| Bitterballen | Crisp fried ragout balls with mustard. The standard Dutch bar snack |
| Cheese plate | Cubes of aged Dutch cheese, usually with mustard |
The kopstootje has a technique, and getting it wrong is the fastest way to mark yourself as new. The jenever glass is filled past what looks sensible, so you do not pick it up. You bend down to the bar, hands off the glass, and take the first sip from the rim. Then you straighten up and drink the beer. Get that right and you have done the one thing this bar asks of a visitor.
Café Chris does not publish prices, so this page does not quote any. Ask at the bar, and bring cash while you are at it.
Is Café Chris really Amsterdam’s oldest bar?
No, and Café Chris has never claimed to be. Its claim is narrower and more defensible: the oldest café in the Jordaan, trading since 1624. The city-wide title is genuinely contested, and which bar wins depends on whether you are counting the building, the licence, or continuous trading.
| Bar | Date claimed | What the date refers to | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| In ‘t Aepjen | 1519 | A tavern with ales, jenever, food and lodging on the site; the wooden house standing there was built around 1550 and is one of only two left in Amsterdam | Zeedijk 1 |
| Café Karpershoek | 1606 | A confirmed licence; the business itself is usually dated to 1641 or a little earlier | Martelaarsgracht 2 |
| De Drie Fleschjes | 1618 | A tasting house; the City of Amsterdam has called it the rightful holder of the oldest-pub title | Gravenstraat 18 |
| Café Chris | 1624 | Opened as a beer house for the Westerkerk builders. The oldest in the Jordaan | Bloemstraat 42 |
| Café Papeneiland | 1642 | Continuous trading as a café | Prinsengracht 2 |
Read the table and you can see why nobody agrees. In ‘t Aepjen has the earliest date but it attaches to a tavern-and-lodging house, not a café in the modern sense. Karpershoek has the oldest piece of paper. De Drie Fleschjes has the municipality’s nod. Café Chris sits fourth on raw date and first in its own neighbourhood, which is the honest way to put it.
An earlier version of this page said the Amsterdam title belonged to Karpershoek and its 1606 date. That was too tidy. The 1606 figure is a licence year, In ‘t Aepjen predates it by almost a century on the trading claim, and the city itself points at De Drie Fleschjes. The correction is above.
What is the Westerkerk connection?
Bloemstraat sits one street back from the Prinsengracht, on the Jordaan edge of the 17th-century canal ring. Café Chris opened in 1624 to serve the men building the Westerkerk, four minutes’ walk away, and the tradition is that they were paid their wages on the premises. The church went up between 1620 and 1631 to a design by Hendrick de Keyser, was finished by his son Pieter de Keyser, and was inaugurated on 8 June 1631. So the café opened when the church was a building site, roughly halfway through the work.
The story that the bar had two doors, one for the workers and one for their masters, is local tradition rather than documented fact, and this page flags it as such.
The Westertoren, the tower beside it, is still the tallest church tower in Amsterdam. Sources put it at 85 or 87 metres and do not agree; either way nothing taller belongs to a church in this city. What you will notice at Café Chris is the sound. The Westertoren carries the only carillon in Amsterdam that chimes right through the twenty-four hours, and it does so at the request of Jordaan residents. Its hour bell, cast by Assuerus Koster in 1636 and weighing 7,509 kg, is the largest bell in the city. Sit outside on Bloemstraat at any hour and you will hear the quarter-hour tune.
Did Rembrandt drink here?
There is no evidence that he did, and this page will not pretend otherwise. What is documented is that he lived very close. After his bankruptcy forced him out of the grand house on the Jodenbreestraat, Rembrandt van Rijn moved in 1658 to a rented house on the Rozengracht, a few minutes from Bloemstraat, and lived there until he died in 1669. He would have known these streets.
He was buried in the Westerkerk on 8 October 1669, the church whose construction started this café. Three details about that burial are worth correcting, because plenty of guides get them wrong, including an earlier version of this page:
- It was not a rented grave. It was a numbered kerkgraf, a grave owned by the church. The number was lost.
- His remains are not there. After about twenty years they were removed and destroyed, which was the ordinary treatment of a poor man’s remains at the time. Rembrandt was buried as a poor man.
- There is a marker, but it is a memorial rather than a grave. It was placed on the north wall in 1909, its design taken from The Night Watch.
His son Titus and his partner Hendrickje Stoffels were buried in the same church. Every 15 July, his birthday, the Westerkerk marks it with a lunchtime concert of music from his lifetime and hangs flowers on the marker.
What is it like inside?
Small, dark and wooden, which is the whole definition of a brown café, or brown bar as English-speaking visitors tend to call it. Stained glass filters what light gets in. The ceiling beams carry engraved Latin inscriptions. A billiard table takes up the middle of a room that does not have middle to spare, and the bar top has been worn smooth by four centuries of forearms. There is no television and no music loud enough to talk over.
Then there is the toilet. The building is too tight to fit a cistern into the men’s cubicle, so the water tank and the pull chain are mounted on the wall outside it, in the bar. You finish, step out, and pull the chain in front of everybody. It is the detail every guide to the place mentions, In Your Pocket among them, and it is the reason most people remember the building at all.
The seat to want is at the bar. That is where the conversation is, and it is the reason a solo visitor can walk into Café Chris and not drink alone. Restaurant Guru’s aggregate across 1,473 reviews puts the place at 4.8 out of 5, which for a bar with no kitchen, no menu and no marketing is a fair summary of what people come for.
How do you get to Café Chris?
Take tram 13 or 17 from Amsterdam Centraal Station to Westermarkt. From the stop, walk to the Prinsengracht, turn right, and take the first left onto Bloemstraat. It is about four minutes. Tap in and out with a contactless bank card or phone; the OVpay guide covers how Dutch transport payment works now that the OV-chipkaart has gone.
Coming from the Anne Frank House, it is under five minutes on foot: the two sit on opposite sides of the same church. Café Chris is deep enough into the Jordaan to feel residential and close enough to the Prinsengracht that you will not get lost finding it.
Two practical points. The café takes no reservations, so there is nothing to book and nothing to lose by turning up. And bring cash: Café Chris has a long-standing reputation as a cash house, listings disagree about whether a card works there in 2026, and this page is not going to guess on your behalf. Carry euros and the question does not arise.
Where else to drink like this in the Jordaan
If Café Chris is full, or shut because it is Sunday night, the neighbourhood has form. Winkel 43 on the Noordermarkt is the daytime counterweight, better known for apple cake than jenever. Café Karpershoek near Centraal is the licence-holding rival from the table above. Café Hoppe on the Spui is the busiest historic brown café in the centre, and Door 74 is the opposite proposition entirely: a reservations-only cocktail bar for when the jenever has done its work.
Frequently asked questions
Is Café Chris Amsterdam’s oldest bar?
No. Café Chris is the oldest café in the Jordaan, trading since 1624. The city-wide title is contested between In ‘t Aepjen on the Zeedijk, whose site was a tavern by 1519, Café Karpershoek, which holds a confirmed 1606 licence, and De Drie Fleschjes, which dates to 1618 and which the City of Amsterdam has named as the rightful holder.
Does Café Chris serve food?
Only bar snacks. There is no kitchen and no printed menu. Expect bitterballen and Dutch cheese, not a meal. Eat elsewhere and come here to drink.
What is a brown café?
A bruine kroeg is the Dutch local pub: dark wood, low light, a short drinks list and conversation instead of a soundtrack. The name describes the colour of the interior, darkened by age and by the decades when smoking indoors was normal. Indoor smoking has been banned in Dutch bars since 2008; the patina stayed.
Why is the toilet chain outside the toilet?
Because the cubicle is too small to hold the cistern. The tank and its pull chain sit on the wall in the bar area, so flushing happens in public view. It is the single most-described feature of the building.
Do you need to book a table at Café Chris?
No, and you cannot. The café does not take reservations. Space is limited and weekend evenings get crowded, so a weekday afternoon between 15:00 and 18:00 is the reliable way in.
Is Café Chris suitable for children?
It is an adult drinking bar. There is no explicit ban, but a small room built around a bar and a billiard table, opening at 15:00 and running past midnight, is not set up for families.
Last updated: August 2026, and what was checked
Every changeable fact on this page was re-checked in August 2026 against venue listings updated in July 2026, the In Your Pocket Amsterdam guide, and Wikipedia’s sourced article on the Westerkerk. What changed:
- Rembrandt’s grave, corrected. This page previously described an unmarked rented grave where his remains rest. It was a church-owned kerkgraf, his remains were removed and destroyed after about twenty years, and the marker on the north wall dates from 1909.
- The oldest-bar claim, corrected. This page previously stated that Amsterdam’s oldest pub is Café Karpershoek, dating to 1606. The title is contested; the comparison table above sets out who claims what and on what basis.
- Sunday closing, kept and emphasised. Some listings publish a 12:00 opening and a midnight Sunday close. The 15:00 opening and the 21:00 Sunday close match the listings updated in July 2026, and the early Sunday close is the detail most likely to spoil a visit.
- A house-beer claim was removed. An earlier version named a specific brewery as the pour here and described its history. That could not be confirmed from any source independent of this page, so it is gone.
- Prices are not quoted. Café Chris publishes none, and inventing a figure would be worse than saying so.
- The Westertoren height is given as a range. Published sources say 85 m and 87 m. Rather than pick one, this page says both and states the part that is not in dispute.
- Card payment is flagged as uncertain. Sources conflict on whether cards are accepted in 2026. The advice is to bring cash, which is correct either way.
