Is the 10 Tastes of Amsterdam Food Tour Worth $112? An Honest Review

Planning your first trip to Amsterdam and wondering whether a food tour is worth three hours on a short city break?

After days of reading reviews on Viator.com, I settled on the 10 Tastes of Amsterdam tour, mostly because I wanted someone local to tell me what I was eating before I spent 4 days in Amsterdam guessing what to eat.

Dutch food gets written off constantly, usually by people who ate a bad sandwich near Centraal and left, and I didn’t want to be one of them.

Here’s every stop we made, what I paid, the one stop that became the highlight of the trip, and who this tour suits. I hope this helps you decide what to do in Amsterdam!

What Is the 10 Tastes of Amsterdam Food Tour?

It’s a three-hour guided walking food tour through three neighborhoods in central Amsterdam: Spui, the Nine Streets, and the Jordaan.

You cover about 2.5km on foot, stop at five or more small local eateries, and get ten tastings plus two drinks along the way.

It replaces a meal rather than adding to one. That matters when you’re budgeting a short trip, because it means you’re not paying for a tour on top of lunch. You’re paying for the tour instead of lunch.

The route sits inside Amsterdam’s UNESCO-listed canal ring, so you’re walking past seventeenth-century merchant houses between bites. The tour leans hard on food history, going back to the city’s start as a fishing settlement, which is why herring shows up early and why nobody apologizes for it.

Because most of the best things you can eat in this city need explaining, and a menu board won’t do it.

Amsterdam’s food runs on 400 years of trade and colonial history. Surinamese and Indonesian food are as Amsterdam as stroopwafels, and you would never guess that from walking around. Jenever, the juniper spirit gin, is Dutch, and shops in this city have been selling it for generations. None of that is obvious from the outside.

There’s also the practical case. You leave knowing what to order for the rest of your trip, and which neighborhoods you want to come back to. On a three- or four-day city break, front-loading that is worth real money.

What Happens When You Arrive at this Amsterdam Food Tour

For this Amsterdam Food Tour, you’ll meet at a cheese shop (at least that’s where we met). Your guide will find you, check names, and take the group down into the canal house cellar. Our guide really made an effort to make this whole experience easygoing.

You’ll be here for a minute; you’re going to try some very famous cheese in this cellar, and you’ll learn about the different flavors. I am not going to spoil it for you but it’s quite a session.

From there it’s a loop on foot. Five or more stops, three neighborhoods, ending near the Anne Frank House. Not every stop has seating. At a few of them, you’re eating standing up.

Our guide was Joeri. Here’s the order this food tour in Amsterdam ran in:

Aged Gouda in the cheese cellar. You start where you meet, tasting Gouda at different ages while Joeri explains what Dutch cheese actually is and where Gouda came from. It sounds like filler. It isn’t. Almost nobody can tell you the difference between young Gouda and the aged stuff until they’ve had them side by side, and once you have, you’ll shop differently for the rest of the trip.

The Begijnhof: No food at this one. It’s a walled courtyard just off Spui where a lay sisterhood lived from the 1300s, and you’d walk straight past the entrance from the street without noticing it. The guide uses the stop to lay out a chunk of Amsterdam’s history before you eat again. Take the pause. You’ll want it before the herring.

Pickled herring, Jonk Volendammer- the stop everyone braces for. Served with onion and pickle, and the Dutch will tell you it’s their sashimi. This was actually pretty good. I am not going to lie, this took me by surprise and I actually enjoyed it. The way the herring is pickeled hides the super fishy taste that I honestly HATE.

Stroopwafels at Hans Egstrof. My favorite stop of the entire tour. Warm, gooey, and nothing like the packaged ones you’ve had from an airport. The shop is famous, and it’s overpriced, which I’d normally hold against a food tour stop. On a tour it works, because a tasting portion is exactly the right amount to try something you wouldn’t pay full price for. Then you use the moment to ask your guide where locals actually buy theirs, which is the whole point of having a local with you. Keep in mind that if you have a different guide, they may take you somewhere else.

Poffertjes at Pancakes Amsterdam. After the Stroopwafel, this was a great stop. Small puffy pancakes with butter and powdered sugar, and my other favorite of the day. This is clearly a very busy place, and for good reason. We saw kids stop in after school (they had backpacks on, so I am assuming), and they were clearly into it. So I knew this was a good stop. You could watch them make the pancakes too.

Jenever at Quinta Wine and Liquor Shop. This is where the tour stopped feeling like a tour. The owner was funny, the shelves were packed with vintage and collector bottles, and we stayed longer here than anywhere else on the route. You have a wonderful opportunity to learn more about Dutch Distilled liquors. We walked out with two bottles of Jenever!

Bitterballen and fries to finish at Heertje Friet. Fried, hot, and exactly what you want after two hours of walking.The Portions are Massive.

Pros and Cons of the 10 Tastes of Amsterdam Food Tour: What Makes It Worth Booking

The portions are real food, not samples. This is the thing most people get wrong before they book. Ten tastings sounds like ten toothpicks. It isn’t. On this Food Tour of Amsterdam, You’re getting cheese with wine, a full herring, a fresh stroopwafel, a plate of poffertjes, bitterballen and fries, and two drinks. I walked out full, and so did everyone else. Which was perfect because then I went to make edibles on the other side of town!

Book it as your lunch or your dinner and plan accordingly, because if you eat beforehand you’ll waste half of what you paid for!

1. Learn the History

I’d book this again for the history alone. The Gouda stop turns into an explanation of Dutch trade. The convent stop has no food at all; it’s just Joeri standing in a courtyard telling you who lived there in the 1300s and why. The jenever shop is 400 years of Dutch drinking culture with an owner who has the bottles to prove it. You come out understanding why Amsterdam looks the way it does, why the houses are narrow, why herring is a national food, why Surinamese and Indonesian places are on every other corner. None of that is on a menu.

2. Orientation of Amsterdam

Three hours in and you can tell aged Gouda from young, you know what bitterballen are before you order them, and you’ve asked a local where they actually buy stroopwafels. That’s worth more on day one than day four.

3. Great Pace and Group Size

Twelve people maximum, mostly indoors, and enough standing around tables that it turns into conversation instead of a lecture you follow at the back.

4. The Order Makes Sense

Cheese, then history while you digest, then herring while you’re still willing, then the sweet stops once you’ve had enough salt. You’re never overloaded, and you’re never waiting too long between stops.

What to Know Before You Commit

Here are a few things to know before you commit:

• It isn’t cheap. I paid 100.15 per person. That’s a real chunk of a short trip budget. It only works out if you treat it as a meal, because as an activity on top of three meals a day it’s hard to justify.
• You do a lot of eating on your feet. Not every stop has seating; some have stairs and narrow doorways, and you’re walking 2.5km between them. If standing for stretches is hard on you, book the private option and say so when you book.
• One stop is a well-known tourist spot. The stroopwafel place is famous and priced like it. On a tour, that’s fine, because a tasting portion is the right way to try something you wouldn’t queue and pay full price for, and you’ve got a local right there to ask where to go instead. Just don’t expect every stop to be a place only locals know.
• The herring is genuinely divisive. Nobody makes you eat it, but it’s one of the ten, so if you skip it you’re getting nine. I have to say though, I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked it.
• Three hours is three hours. It’s a real commitment on a two- or three-day city break, and you’re on someone else’s schedule the whole time. But I will say the 3 hours go by pretty fast!

How Much Does the 10 Tastes of Amsterdam Food Tour Cost?

As of September 2026, the day tour is $112.47 and the evening tour is $124.30. That’s about a 12 percent rise in two years, worth knowing if you’ve read an older review quoting a lower number.

Whether it’s worth it depends on how you count it. As an activity on top of three meals a day, $112 is hard to justify. As a replacement for lunch or dinner, which is what it actually is, you’re paying for ten tastings, two drinks, and three hours of a local explaining what you’re eating. A sit-down dinner for two in the canal ring costs about the same and teaches you nothing.

How to pay less:

• Book the day tour instead of the evening one and save about $12 a head
• Skip the meal it replaces. Showing up full is the most expensive way to do this tour
• Book early. Viator lists this as booked an average of 47 days ahead, and the cheaper day slots go first in summer

Check current prices and availability here

Which Tour Option Should You Book?

For this particular tour, you have six versions, which is more flexibility than most food tours offer. I took the Day Tour, which was 10 am to 3 pm.

Day tour, 10 AM to 3 PM, starts. $112.47. The default and the most inexpensive. Slots run hourly, so you can make it a late breakfast or a proper lunch and still have your afternoon. This is the one I’d book.

Evening tour, 4, 5, or 6 PM start. $124.30. It’s your dinner, the light on the canals is better, and the jenever shop makes more sense at 6 PM than at 11 AM. The catch is the herring, which isn’t served after 4 PM. If trying it matters to you, take a day slot.

Private Spui and Jordaan food tour. $432.10 for the group. Your own guide, flexible start time, hotel or ship pickup, custom route, and a shorter walk if you need one. This is the option for mobility limits, gluten free requirements, or a group of four or more, where the per person math starts working in your favor.

Private food and Red Light District tour. $432.10. Same price, different route.

Private Grand Amsterdam, 4 to 5 hours. $887.88. For a one-day stop where you want the food and the sights together.

Private food tour with canal cruise. $1,059.54. A splurge, though your guide can also point you to a one hour canal cruise after any public tour if you just want both.

On dietary needs:

Vegetarian and pescatarian are handled well on the public tour. Flag it when you book and remind your guide on the day.

Gluten-free works at roughly 70 percent of stops on tours starting before 4 PM, so if you’re strict about it, the private tour is the honest answer.

Good to Know Before You Book

• Three hours, about 2.5km on foot, ending near the Anne Frank House
• Maximum twelve travelers on public tours
• Free cancellation up to 24 hours ahead, and that window is enforced
• No hotel pickup on public tours. Only the private options include it
• Not wheelchair accessible. Stroller accessible, though you may need to park it outside briefly
• Not suitable for anyone with heart problems or other serious medical conditions
• Tips aren’t included. Guides take cash, Venmo, or PayPal
• Herring is only served on tours starting before 4 PM
• The tour is in English