Amsterdam is quietly excellent for Mediterranean eating, if you know where to look. The best Mediterranean food in Amsterdam is not only the obvious sit-down dinners. It is the bakery counters and corner kitchens doing simit, burek, baklava and milk cakes properly, the food people from the region actually grew up on. This is our guide to the savoury and the sweet, and where to find both done well.

We run Ruma (formerly De Beste Lekkernij), a Mediterranean bakery in the Nine Streets, so we live in this world daily. We will point you to ourselves where we have earned it and keep the rest genuine and useful.

What counts as Mediterranean here

Mediterranean is a big tent: Turkish, Levantine, Balkan, North African, Italian, Greek. What ties it together is an approach more than a border. Olive oil and sesame over butter and cream. Honey and nuts and slow-soaked syrups. Bread that matters. Vegetables treated as more than a side. The best of it in Amsterdam holds onto that even when the ingredients travel a long way to get here.

The best Mediterranean food in Amsterdam

1. Simit sandwiches at Ruma (formerly De Beste Lekkernij)

Start savoury. Simit is the Turkish sesame bread ring, crisp outside and soft within, and it makes a brilliant sandwich base. We fill warm simit with things like crispy tuna, smoked salmon, Italian carpaccio, or mozzarella caprese. It is the kind of lunch you plan a walk around. New to simit? Here is what simit is.

2. Burek and savoury pastries

Flaky filo coiled around spiced minced beef, spinach and feta, or potato, baked golden every morning. Burek is comfort food across the Balkans and Turkey, and a good one is all about the crisp-to-filling ratio. We bake several daily, and they are one of the most underrated savoury bites in the Nine Streets.

3. Baklava

Onto the sweet. Thin filo, chopped nuts, baked golden and soaked in honey so it stays glossy. Amsterdam does not have baklava on every corner, so a fresh, properly made one is worth the detour. Pistachio is the pick. More in our best baklava in Amsterdam guide.

4. Trilece, the viral three-milk cake

The dessert that put a lot of people onto Mediterranean sweets in the first place. A light sponge soaked in three milks, finished with caramel, served cold. Ours has over 600 million views and we bake it by hand every day. If you only try one sweet thing, make it this.

5. Mezze and the savoury table

Hummus, labneh, grilled vegetables, flatbreads and dips are easy to find across the city's Levantine and Turkish kitchens, and they are some of the best value eating in Amsterdam. Build a table of small plates and let the bread do the work.

6. Italian and Greek corners

The Mediterranean tent stretches west too. Crisp cannoli, fresh mozzarella, and Greek pastries and strong coffee all turn up around the centre and the Jordaan. Our own Dubai-style and pistachio cannoli sit in this family, the crisp shell filled to order.

Mediterranean food in Amsterdam, by craving

Where to find Mediterranean food in Amsterdam

The Nine Streets (De 9 Straatjes) and the Jordaan have a strong run of Mediterranean spots, and the city's Turkish and Levantine kitchens are spread across De Pijp and beyond. Ruma sits in the middle of the Nine Streets at Herenstraat 24A, a short walk from Amsterdam Centraal, Dam Square and the Anne Frank House. We do the bakery side of this cuisine, savoury and sweet, fresh each morning.

What makes Mediterranean food so good for sharing

The genius of this cuisine is that it is built for the table, not the plate. Mezze is a whole meal made of small dishes meant to be passed around. A tray of burek gets cut and shared. Baklava comes in little diamonds because one is rich enough and ten people can each have a piece. This is food designed for company, which is part of why it travels and caters so well. If you are feeding a crowd, a Mediterranean spread of warm bread, dips, pastries and sweets is one of the most generous and least stressful ways to do it. We put together exactly this kind of spread for events, which you can see in our dessert table catering guide.

Is Mediterranean food healthy?

The everyday version of it is genuinely one of the better ways to eat. Olive oil instead of butter, plenty of vegetables, pulses, fish, whole grains, nuts and yoghurt: the so-called Mediterranean diet is built on this template, and it is consistently rated among the healthiest in the world. The desserts are a treat rather than an everyday food, of course, but even there the lean is toward nuts, honey, fruit and milk rather than heavy frosting and refined sugar. A simit and a coffee is a far better breakfast than most grab-and-go options in the city.

Bringing the Mediterranean home

A lot of this food is easy to take with you. Simit and burek are excellent cold the next day. Baklava and lokum keep for days and make great gifts. Cannoli are best eaten fresh, but they survive a short trip home. If you want to recreate the table, build it around good bread, a couple of dips, something baked and savoury, and one proper sweet to finish. For the sweet end specifically, our best Turkish desserts in Amsterdam and best desserts in Amsterdam guides will point you in the right direction.

Come eat the Mediterranean way

Simit sandwiches, burek, baklava, trilece, all handmade daily. Find us in the Nine Streets, see the full menu, or order across Amsterdam. For the sweet side in depth, try our best Turkish desserts in Amsterdam guide.