Patrons on the riverbank terrace outside Café Hesp are bathing in the kind of sunset that’s making their glasses of rosé look like liquid gold. A teak cruiser swishes up the Amstel River, its wake unsettling houseboats moored to the bank. As they bob, a cargo bike pulls up and a gaggle of children clamber out to splash about in the water.
Twenty years ago, when the east side of the Amstel was considered the wrong side of the river, the swimmers might have been seen as especially hardy. Such thoughts are barely conceivable now on this poplar-lined bank, overlooked by elegant gables and burnished stained glass, with laid-back electropop drifting in from the next bar. The Amstel divided upmarket Amsterdam from low for a chunk of the last century. If the west bank represented the Golden Age, then the Oost — Dutch for ‘east’ — embodied the modern, less distinguished one, where colonial history came home to roost in the motherland.
Over time, the city has spun that perceived liability into multiple assets. In the streets behind Café Hesp, brutalist office blocks have been boldly transformed for a diverse young crowd, which moves from brunch spot to cocktail lounge like hands on a clock. Cafes and wine bars have brought new zing to Pretoriusstraat, a South African district with a soaring Mandela mosaic. On leafy Spinozastraat, I struggle to get a table at Mama Makan — the slow-burn success story tucked inside a 19th-century children’s hospital turned Hyatt Regency hotel — where traditional Indonesian ‘rice tables’ serve up a feast of 13 different dishes from across the archipelago, accompanied by rice.
