Right in the heart of shops selling phallic-shaped lighters, sensimilla paraphernalia and orange T-shirts sporting such gems as ‘Good girls go to heaven; bad girls go to Amsterdam’ (although probably rather less well punctuated), sits Gebroeders Niemeijer. As it says on the window, it’s an ‘ambachtelijke’ French bakery, which I think best translates as artisanal.
They serve breakfast, lunch and high tea, and fill a niche in the centre of Amsterdam that desperately needs to be filled. The ambience is light, breezy and child-friendly (without being adult-unfriendly, if you know what I mean) and tables are generally full. The menu is bread heavy (for obvious reasons) while being fairly Dutch in its leaning towards cheese.
We ordered the ‘plankje’, consisting of three different types of bread (all satisfyingly dense and chewy – in a good way), butter, jam, two varieties of Beemster cheese, and some dried sausage whose provenance we never discovered since it was advertised as Italian ham on the menu and clearly wasn’t. Nevertheless, it was very good. My cappuccino was also excellent, although Andrea’s latte was more milky than a Starbucks coffee, which is to say: very weak. Shame.
Brunch came to around €23 for two, which seemed reasonable. GB also does what looked to be a wide selection of beautiful and reasonably priced patisserie, although I didn’t have room to try any of the cakes, biscuits or tartlettes after my bready brunch.
As I left, I noticed some chubby tourists peering at the menu of one of the Nieuwendijk’s red-walled, bouncer-guarded, greasy pizza and steak houses. They walked straight past the bikes and bread of Gebroeders Niemeijer. All the more for us then.
