Around four hours after lunch, you’ll be ready for the favorite afternoon snack of the Amsterdammers—a raw herring, eaten with a toothpick, from the counter of an open-air stand! While other European cities specialize in hot sausage stands, scattered around town, Amsterdam offers herring stands instead—and after eating your first raw Dutch herring, covered with chopped onions, you’ll understand why. I don’t care how many other species of herring you’ve had—marinated, creamed, pickled, salted—there’s nothing so good as a raw Dutch herring at the famous open air herring stands of Amsterdam.
There are, quite literally, at least a score of herring stands in the central part of Amsterdam, never far from where you may be (ask a resident to point one out). If you’re lucky, you’ll arrive at the stand while a true Dutchman is imbibing the succulent fish. Notice how he grabs it daintily by the tail, holds it high above his mouth, and then devours from the bottom up. For you, the owner of the stand will cut the skinned and gutted fish into four pieces, give you a wooden pick with which to pick the pieces up, and a bowl of diced onions into which to dip the fish.
The best time for herring is in late April and May, when the first catch of “nieuwe haring” comes in. The quality remains high throughout the end of September, but begins to disappear as the winter months set in. Whatever your normal attitude is towards herring, don’t miss an opportunity to taste the Dutch variety—it’s incomparable, a major surprise of amazing Amsterdam.
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