De Pijp: Amsterdam’s Most Overrated and Still Most Interesting Neighbourhood
De Pijp has been declared over for at least fifteen years. Every year someone writes the piece — too expensive, too touristy, the Albert Cuypmarkt is full of stroopwafel vendors catering to day-trippers, the bars have turned into places with playlists. And every year I still walk through it on Saturday morning and think: yeah, but it’s still good.
What De Pijp actually is
De Pijp is a 19th-century working-class district that gentrified so thoroughly it came out the other side and became something more complicated. The housing is dense — narrow Amsterdam canal houses converted to apartments, students and young professionals stacked above each other. The streets are walkable. The Albert Cuypmarkt at Albert Cuypstraat is the longest street market in the Netherlands and still, if you go before 10am on a Tuesday, a functioning neighbourhood market rather than a tourist experience.
The Surinamese layer
Amsterdam has a substantial Surinamese community and De Pijp is where a lot of that history is legible. The Surinamese-Javanese food — roti, bami, nasi goreng — available at the small takeaways around the market is genuinely among the best food in Amsterdam and costs almost nothing. This is the thing most visitors miss entirely.
Why I still go
The coffee is good. The bars are still worth it if you pick the right ones. The market on a grey Tuesday morning has exactly the energy that Amsterdam’s central tourist districts have lost. It is not what it was. It is still worth your time.
