Vlaams Friteshuis Vleminckx

Vlaams Friteshuis Vleminckx is a walk-up fries hatch at Voetboogstraat 33, 1012 XK Amsterdam, open seven days a week from 11:00 to 19:00 and until 20:00 on Thursday. There is no dining room, no table to book and no online ordering: you queue on the street, pick a small, medium or large cone, and choose from two boards of more than twenty sauces. Card and cash both work at the window, and the sauce is charged on top of the cone, exactly as the hand-painted sign above the counter has said for decades. The family story starts in 1887; this counter has been frying on Voetboogstraat since 1957.

Vleminckx at a glance

Address	Voetboogstraat 33, 1012 XK Amsterdam
Opening hours	Mon-Wed, Fri-Sun 11:00-19:00; Thursday 11:00-20:00; open every day
Payment	Card and cash both accepted at the window
Sizes	Small, medium, large, in a paper cone, fried to order
Sauce	Charged separately; 23 sauces across two boards
Seating	None. It is a hatch in the wall
Diet	Fries are vegetarian and vegan; fried in vegetable oil; no breaded items in the fryer
Busiest hour	Saturday 15:00. Quietest is Monday at opening
Rating	4.5 on Google from more than 5,700 reviews

What are the opening hours at Vlaams Friteshuis Vleminckx?

Vleminckx opens at 11:00 every day and closes at 19:00, except on Thursday when it stays open until 20:00. It does not close on Mondays or Sundays. That timetable comes from the shop’s own site, and it is backed up by a “7 DAYS OPEN” placard fixed beside the counter.

Day	Hours
Monday	11:00-19:00
Tuesday	11:00-19:00
Wednesday	11:00-19:00
Thursday	11:00-20:00
Friday	11:00-19:00
Saturday	11:00-19:00
Sunday	11:00-19:00

Third-party listings disagree with each other about this counter more than about almost any other address in the centre. Some still show a 18:00 close, some show Sunday opening at 12:00, and some show the shop shut on a day it is trading. Where a listing conflicts with the timetable above, the shop’s own official site is the one to trust. Thursday is the single late night, and it is also the only day the fryers are still running at 19:00.

Where exactly is Vleminckx and how do you get there?

Voetboogstraat 33 is a short side street running between Spui and Heiligeweg, one minute off Kalverstraat. The house number is 33, not 31: several guides print 31, and the number 33 is painted on the wall beside the hatch. Look for the cream awning with dark red lettering and, most of the day, a line of people behind red ribbons.

Starting from	Distance	On foot
Spui tram stop	About 150 m	2 minutes
Rokin metro station (line 52)	About 300 m	4 minutes
Dam Square	About 650 m	8 minutes down Kalverstraat
Bloemenmarkt / Muntplein	About 450 m	6 minutes
Amsterdam Centraal	About 1.7 km	20 minutes via Damrak and Rokin

The nearest metro is Rokin on line 52, the north-south line that runs from Amsterdam Noord through Centraal to Zuid. The nearest tram stop is Spui. Amsterdam renumbers tram routes more often than visitors expect, so check the current line at the stop or in the GVB planner rather than relying on a number printed in an old guidebook. If you are paying as you go, our guide to OVpay covers tapping in with a bank card, and our list of public transport mistakes visitors make covers the rest.

Do you need cash at Vleminckx?

No. Vleminckx takes card and cash at the window, and most customers tap. This is worth saying plainly because “cash only” is one of the most repeated claims about the shop online, and it sends people hunting for an ATM before they queue. The shop states directly that both are accepted and that the queue moves at the same speed either way.

What does a cone cost, and why is sauce charged separately?

Vleminckx does not publish a price list online, and the sauce is charged on top of the fries. The rule is painted on the front of the shop in English: PRICE NOT INCLUDES SAUS. It has been there for decades and it is the single thing most first-timers get caught by, because a cone plus two sauces is a different number from the one they had in mind.

Third-party listings put a cone with sauce somewhere in the €4 to €7 range depending on size, but those figures come from aggregators rather than from the shop. We are not going to print a euro figure the counter has not published. The boards above the hatch are the only authority, and you will be standing in front of them for a few minutes anyway. Fries come in three sizes, small, medium and large, always in a paper cone, always fried to order.

Which sauces does Vleminckx actually have?

There are 23 sauces, split across two boards: a regular wall of 12 and a Belgian wall of 11. Most guides round this to “25 sauces” and leave it there. Here is the list as the shop publishes it, so you can decide before you reach the front.

The regular wall	The Belgian wall
Fries sauce	Belgian mayonnaise
Mayonnaise	Samurai sauce (spicy, creamy)
Tomato ketchup	American sauce
Curry ketchup	Tartar sauce
Satay sauce (warm peanut)	Andalouse sauce
Sambal sauce (hot)	Hannibal sauce (lightly spicy)
Joppie sauce	Cocktail sauce
Piccalilly	Garlic sauce
Apple sauce	Mustard sauce
Special mix curry ketchup (with mayonnaise and onions)	Spicy ketchup
Special mix tomato ketchup (with mayonnaise and onions)	Barbecue sauce
Oorlog mix (mayonnaise, satay sauce and onions)

Truffle mayonnaise turns up constantly in reviews and in older write-ups, including one review the shop quotes on its own site, but it is not on either published board. Treat it as something to ask about at the window rather than something to count on.

What should you order the first time?

If you only order once, order a medium with oorlog. That is mayonnaise, warm satay sauce and raw chopped onions on the same cone, and it is the most Dutch thing on either board. The name translates as “war”, which is a comment on how the cone looks rather than on the heat.

If you want	Ask for
The full Dutch experience	Oorlog mix
The benchmark, nothing clever	Mayonnaise
The Dutch cult sauce nobody can describe	Joppie sauce
Heat with something creamy behind it	Samurai or sambal
No egg or dairy	Tomato ketchup, curry ketchup or sambal
Something you cannot get at home	Hannibal or andalouse from the Belgian wall

Can you eat vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free at Vleminckx?

Yes to all three, as long as you pick the sauce carefully. The word VEGETARIAN is painted on the facade in capitals. The fries are potato, vegetable oil and salt, and because fries are the only thing this counter makes, nothing breaded ever goes into the fryers.

Diet	Where you stand
Vegetarian	Fries and most sauces are fine
Vegan	Fries are vegan. Tomato ketchup, curry ketchup and sambal have no egg or dairy; every mayonnaise-based sauce does
Gluten-free	Fries are gluten-free with no shared fryer. Mayonnaise, ketchup, curry ketchup and satay are the safe classics
Nut allergy	Avoid satay sauce and the oorlog mix, which contains it
Halal	No meat, animal fat or alcohol at the counter, but the shop is not certified

Name your allergy at the window. The mayonnaise family carries egg and mustard, satay carries peanuts, and a few of the Belgian sauces carry soy or gluten.

How long is the queue, and when should you go?

Go at 11:00 on a weekday and you will walk straight up; arrive at 15:00 on a Saturday and you are joining the busiest hour of the week. Google records how busy this counter is hour by hour, and the pattern is consistent enough to plan around. The numbers below are Google’s own busyness index, where 100 is the shop’s peak.

Day	11:00	13:00	15:00	17:00	18:00
Monday	15	41	42	35	26
Tuesday	18	37	37	36	27
Wednesday	21	45	50	42	31
Thursday	23	44	47	45	44
Friday	29	67	69	57	48
Saturday	34	78	100	85	64
Sunday	28	64	76	56	39

Three things fall out of that table. Monday and Tuesday never rise above roughly 40 percent of peak at any hour, so a weekday visit is a different experience from a weekend one. The quiet window is the first hour after opening, not the mid-afternoon lull that guidebooks usually recommend, because at this counter the afternoon is the peak. And Thursday holds its crowd late, staying near 44 at 18:00 while every other day is falling away, which is what a 20:00 close does to a queue.

Even at peak the line moves. Fries are cut and fried in small batches all day, so the wait is a batch cycle rather than a kitchen ticket. Reviewers say the same two things over and over: it went faster than expected, and it was worth it.

Is there anywhere to sit?

Not at Vleminckx. There are no tables and no chairs, only the counter and the street. Most people eat walking towards Spui or the flower market, or sit on a bench near the Begijnhof a few minutes away.

There is one workaround the shop points to itself: The Chicken Bar at Voetboogstraat 6-8, fifty metres up the same street, is run by the same family and serves the same fries at a table, with online ordering. If sitting down matters more than standing at the hatch, that is the move.

What else does the same family run nearby?

Four counters, all within about two hundred metres of each other in the same quarter. Visitors regularly assume Vleminckx has branches across the city; it does not. What it has is siblings.

Counter	Address	What it sells
Vleminckx de Sausmeester	Voetboogstraat 33	The original fries hatch, since 1957
The Chicken Bar	Voetboogstraat 6-8	Rotisserie chicken, served with Vleminckx fries, seated
Fish & Fries	Muntplein 1	Battered cod alongside Vleminckx fries
The Dutch Chocolate Bar	Heiligeweg 20	Dutch chocolate

Is Vleminckx worth the queue?

For a first fries in Amsterdam, yes, and the reason is the sauce boards rather than the potato. The fries are good, hot, hand-cut and fried in small batches, and plenty of counters in the city do that competently. What no other counter does is hang twenty-three sauces above the hatch and let a two-euro decision turn into the interesting part of the meal.

The shop holds 4.5 on Google across more than 5,700 reviews and the same 4.5 on Tripadvisor and Yelp, which is a stable number rather than a launch spike. Time Out named it among the city’s best cheap eats in 2026, Lonely Planet listed it among the best places to eat in Amsterdam in 2025, and the national AD Friettest certificate from 2013 hangs by the counter. If you want a second opinion in the same block, Fabel Friet is a ten-minute walk west and runs its own queue.

Mistakes people make at Vleminckx

• Bringing cash because a guide said cash only. Card works, and most of the queue taps.
• Walking to number 31. The hatch is at 33, with the number painted on the wall beside it.
• Expecting the sauce to be included. The sign says otherwise, in English, in capital letters.
• Arriving at 12:55 on a Sunday assuming they open at noon. Opening is 11:00 every day of the week.
• Timing a visit for the mid-afternoon “lull”. Mid-afternoon is this shop’s peak; the lull is the first hour after opening.
• Planning to sit down. There is nowhere to sit. Eat standing, or go to The Chicken Bar up the street.

Nearby, and what to eat next

Voetboogstraat sits inside a dense few blocks of the old centre, so a cone of fries slots easily into a longer afternoon. The Allard Pierson Museum of Antiquities is five minutes away on Oude Turfmarkt. For the rest of the Dutch snack canon, our Amsterdam street food guide and our round-up of Dutch delicacies worth trying cover herring, bitterballen and the rest.

If you are collecting the classics: Winkel 43 for apple pie in the Jordaan, Rudi’s Original Stroopwafels on the Albert Cuyp market, Manneken Pis on Damrak if you want to compare a tourist-strip fries counter with this one, and THE BUTCHER in the Nine Streets for a burger. Eating this way is also one of the cheapest ways through the city, which our guide to visiting Amsterdam on a tight budget gets into, and it keeps you clear of the tourist traps worth avoiding. Queue length also tracks the season, so when you visit Amsterdam changes how long you stand on Voetboogstraat.

Frequently asked questions