Pancake Bakery, Amsterdam

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This was very close to my houseboat I was renting, so I checked it out one night and had a great experience---it was crowded and they were a little rushed but still came through with a good performance----I had a thai chicken pancake with veggies and salad included---also some good homemade rice chips----had some cinnamon ice cream for dessert and some expresso---a very good meal at a local retaurant----very much recommended------

Favorite Dish: thai pancake

I happen to pass by this place while roaming around the city and trying to find the Anne Frank House. It was closed at the time, but I vowed to return. After a quick morning stop at a coffee shop this place definitely hit the spot. It's a fairly small (but typically long and narrow for Amsterdam) restaurant. I think there is a second floor, but the main area downstairs is nice and cozy. We got there fairly early, and by the time we were eating there was a considerable line outside.

Favorite Dish: They have a great menu. Never had I seen savory pancakes. Their pancakes are light like crepes. I had the pancakes with ham and mushroom. They were freakin awesome!

I happen to pass by this place while roaming around the city and trying to find the Anne Frank House. It was closed at the time, but I vowed to return. After a quick morning stop at a coffee shop this place definitely hit the spot. It's a fairly small (but typically long and narrow for Amsterdam) restaurant. I think there is a second floor, but the main area downstairs is nice and cozy. We got there fairly early, and by the time we were eating there was a considerable line outside.

Favorite Dish: They have a great menu. Never had I seen savory pancakes. Their pancakes are light like crepes. I had the pancakes with ham and mushroom. They were freakin awesome!

Dutch pancakes are more like we in North America call crepes. You can get them with many types of fillings or as a dessert with syrup or chocolate, which is how many of the Dutch have them. We were with a Dutch couple one day and they seemed to scoff at anything in a pancake that wasn't sweet. But I digress.

The Pancake Bakery has been featured in guidebooks, which is where i'd heard about it and it wasn't too far from our hotel so that was our choice for our last evening in Amsterdam. It's on the well known canal, Prinsengracht, a very short walk from the Anne Frank house and is in a 17th century canal house on two levels. It's an unassuming restaurant, not flash and fancy like you might think a touristy type restaurant would be. You go down a few steps into a narrow, deep room and there is also an upper level. One wall is brick with framed old photos and prints lining the walls, the other is plaster with a specials board and more prints. The wait staff are quick and efficient and the menu has dozens and dozens of varieties of pancakes, sweet and savoury.

They have traditional type pancakes with fruits, or ham, and always cheese if you want it, and they have international versions with things like chili, curry, and satay. If you want more ingredients that listed on a particular type, you will pay a fee for each so it can add up.

They also do omelettes if you prefer and they have a children's menu for smaller sizes and have a few soups and starters as well but you probably won't have room!

Tram 13, take the Westermarkt stop. Open from noon until 9:30 p.m. they accept major credit cards. Prices vary from 5 ro 13 euro per pancake, more if you add extra toppings. The traditional ones average about 8 euros and the specialty and international ones are 10 to 12 euro so it can be expensive especially if you're adding extra toppings. Children portions are a bit cheaper.

Favorite Dish: We each had a pancake and the one i had, if i remember, had chicken and cheese and it was the size of a pizza. Too much for me to finish but it was quite tasty. Mind you i made the mistake of having onion soup as a starter and that's filling on it's own. Graham had an Indonesian satay one and was quite satisfied with his as well. We shared a dessert called poffertjes which we thought were like profiteroles but are actually mini pancake type rounds with sweet stuff on them. This one had cherries soaked in kirsh with cream ("slagroom") on it which i liked but Graham didn't as he found the liqueur too strong.

The pancakes are large and crepe-like! My husband doesn't usually like pancakes or Greek food so he was going to sit it out while I ate my Greek pancake but he tried one bite and ended up eating half of my pancake both times we visited the restaurant! You can sit inside or out. And the experience was just as good the second time!

Favorite Dish: Liked the Greek Pancake because the lamb was seasoned nicely and there was a good sauce. The feta cheese was mild. and the pancake base lite and fluffy. Lots of veggies, meat and cheese made this perfect for brunch in between the Anne Frank museum (Also great. Don't miss the film and questions at the end of the tour) and a long walk through Jordan and down to Vondel Park.

The Pancake Bakery, a famous restaurant in Amsterdam, was one of our favorite eating spots during our visit. We saw a lot of the area trying to find it the first time, before we learned how the canal street building numbering worked. It's at Prinsengracht 191. "Gracht" is Dutch for canal, so any street address with that in the name is a canal street, with a separate street and sidewalk on both sides of the canal. Same as in the U.S., building numbers are odd-numbered on one side and even on the other, but not necessarily corresponding from one side to the other. If not aware of this you can easily walk in the wrong direction. Picture the numbering starting from opposite ends of the street on each side and this will make sense. It's a short walk down the street from the Anne Frank House museum, and convenient to tie that in with a visit there.

As with many other Amsterdam restaurants and buildings in general, the very small size when facing it from the street made it at first seem like a hole-in-the-wall sort of place, but as we became accustomed to, was larger inside than expected due to the depth of the interior. Watch your head on the way out. I got my first of two noggin bumps there!

Some of the friendliest staff we encountered anywhere, and a very nice mix of other people both times we went.

Favorite Dish: We went expecting U.S. style flapjacks as pancakes. Wrong again, but pleasantly surprised once we tried them. More of a French style crepe, but delicious, very large, and with a mouth-watering variety of toppings. Also some very good omelettes.

This is a great place for pancakes. There are 70 different pancakes to choose from, pancakes for dessert (sweet) or for lunch (salted). Portions are huge and well filled.

The restaurant is located in the cellar of an old storehouse and it is a cosy place with a lot of old pictures on the walls.

Claimed to make the best pancakes in town, this place is close by Anne Frank House, and so consider making a sweet stop here for an afternoon treat after a rather overwhelming and depressing walk through the Anne Frank House. The variety of pancakes offered is great, the pancakes are made rather 'commercial-like' if I can put it that way, but nonetheless tasted delicious to us!