Black Lives Matter is all around our news feeds, so we decided to put together a list of our favorite black-owned businesses in Amsterdam. It’s time to put our euros where our mouths are and empower our local community. Feel free to add in the comments down below any business you love and we may have forgotten. The more the merrier. By Elise Gherlan Chicken and waffles brunch box It started with a picture of a chicken & waffles box on my feed. It was the first time I spontaneously decided to try food based on an Instagram recommendation. We were still in isolation, my boyfriend and I, a ..read more

In the spirit of supporting local business, today I’m sharing a few small-scale cafes, restaurants and hangouts of choice in Amsterdam West, from which you can order meals, beverages & baked goods. *** Here we are: most of us barricaded at home, a few still in denial. Many working from home, others forced to go out into the world to supply and take care of the first group. Whatever your stance regarding our current covid-19 situation, the reality is that schools, gyms, cafes and restaurants were forced to close down. That has tremendous consequences to all sorts of small businesses. T ..read more

In the beggining of November I flew to my country of birth, where I was joined by a couple of friends from Amsterdam. We had a vegan blogger amongst us but, as you might imagine, Portugal is far from being a nation of herbivorous. We turned out to be a good team, my friends and me. We stuck together at meal times. Little did we know that Lisbon’s veggie scene is banging. Somehow, it makes sense, I later reasoned. Given the gastronomic standards in Portugal, for you to convince a non-vegetarian Portuguese person to eat a meal free of their trusted animal products, the food has to be nothing sho ..read more

I regularly post about Instameets on Amsterdive’s Instagram account (mostly in stories), but I started to wonder if people even knew what that was. As the name suggests, an instameet is an occasion when people who have an Instagram account get together. I mean, if you’re an intense user of the platform, you have probably heard about these gatherings in the city / country where you live. Every place has their own insta community. But what exactly happens at such an insta meet? I asked my insta-stories friends if they knew what this exactly was. Half of the people had no idea so I decided t ..read more

Once upon a time, two young Italian men decided to act on their vision of a vegetarian cafe with delicious and balanced meals to nourish bodies and minds, a place that could function as an inspiring chill out room as well as a podium for different artists. They called it H/eart.h, which sounds like the name of a long lost tribe of people, united by the love of art, musical gatherings, and tiramisu. An oasis in the buzzy Albert Cuypstraat, right in De Pijp, one of the most traditional neighborhoods in Amsterdam. H/eart.h serves vegetarian meals with Italian roots, not forgetting the very nece ..read more

I’m a cafe person, and hardly a day goes by without paying a visit to one of my hangouts of choice. Usually, the process of deciding which cafe to head to is quite simple: I know my favourites, and I am well-acquainted with their dynamics, their menu, their baristas. I do happen to have conditioned myself to work in public spaces, where the cacophony of conversations and crockery, and the smell of coffee being brewed have this magical property of making me focus. I’m a sort of pavlovian dog, specialty coffee being my trigger. From time to time, however, this expl ..read more

It was autumn and I had promised to make dinner. He remarked, please, anything but a cold salad. That was it. Anything but a cold salad for dinner. This man knew my habits well. Believe it or not, a hearty salad ( still) is my favorite type of meal. The fact that he didn’t want to eat one didn’t bother me, that day. Somehow, I didn’t feel like eating a mix of veggies, grains and leaves either. I’ll improvise something, I replied. Next thing I knew, I was buying a bag of creamy potatoes at the supermarket. And kale. And two sausages. This wouldn’t have been strange hadn’t I been ..read more

The first thing you notice when you come in is this intense smell of cake – grandma style. Second thing: the friendliness of the girl behind the counter. She has a frank and welcoming smile and the very fact she is baking cake makes her adorable. Finally, ( in case you didn’t know it in advance): everything here is vegan. This is like you’re jumping into a witch-free version of Hansel and Gretel’s tale. Having lived next door ( now I live three streets further), it is really special to have Koffie ende Koeck as your neighbourhood cafe. I’ve been on the “vegetarian side” for ..read more

A few days ago I got a wordpress notification letting me know it was my 3rd birthday within the community. It was funny to realize that I started the Amsterdive project precisely 3 years ago and that I only really went for it this year. That’s quite a delay. Right now, I’m sitting at Rum Baba, at the Pretoriusstraat in Amsterdam East, as I used to, when I lived in the area, and I just had this epiphany of how this place played a special part in the Amsterdive’s kick-start. I started coming to Rum Baba at a time when I had this ‘sketch of a blog’ with a hideou ..read more

I love the feeling of being in love. I guess most people reckon with this. That’s why I want to talk about it while it’s still hot and burning. Rotterdam. I spent five years in Amsterdam hearing about how ugly Rotterdam was. I had been there once, just briefly, and I kept on postponing my visit to the city for all sorts of irrelevant reasons. Until I got an invitation to go there, and cover a theater play for my blog. On the train I texted this Rotterdammer friend of mine, in the wildest hope that, despite being Dutch, he didn’t have a Dutch agenda. Very remarkably he didn’t. On ..read more