Best cafés in the Jordaan for laptop work

The Jordaan is the most over-Instagrammed neighbourhood in Amsterdam and somehow still the best one for spending a Tuesday morning working from a café. The trick is knowing which doors to walk through — and, critically, which to walk past — and that knowledge is the result of a lot of mediocre flat whites.

I work from cafés in this neighbourhood roughly three days a week. This is the list. Ranked by the only metrics that matter: wifi, plug sockets, seat density, coffee, and the ratio of locals to tourists at 10am on a weekday.

What I am ranking on

Not vibes. Not "could be from a Pinterest board". Specifically:

• Wifi — actually fast, not "yes we have wifi" with 2 Mbps.
• Plugs — in the seats, not just behind the counter.
• Seat density — enough tables to find one, not so many that you are pressed against another laptop.
• Coffee — has to clear a low bar (better than a chain) and ideally a high bar (good enough to leave the house for).
• Tourist load — tourists are fine, tourist crowds are not. The difference matters.

1. Toki, Binnen Dommersstraat

The right answer to almost every question. Quiet by design, lit like a small Japanese gallery, the oat flat white is the best on the list, and the long bench seat under the window is the single best laptop-working seat in the Jordaan. Plugs are present but you have to know where they are.

Get there before 10:00 if you want the bench. After 11:00 it is full and stays full until 14:00. Definately go.

2. Café Pluk, Reestraat

Pluk is on every "cute Amsterdam café" list ever written, which would normally disqualify it, but the back room is largely tourist-free during the week and the working tables there are excellent. The light is good, the food is good, the bill is reasonable.

Bring headphones. The front room is brutal at lunch.

3. Lot Sixty One, Kinkerstraat

Technically on the edge of the Jordaan but I am counting it. Best espresso in the area, the kind of place where the people behind the counter actually notice if their grind is wrong. Plugs in most seats, fast wifi, fills up by 11:00 with a mix of locals and the kind of tourists who research their coffee before they travel — which is to say, the okay kind.

4. Bocca Coffee, Kerkstraat

The roastery is attached. The coffee is, predictably, very good. The café itself is busier than ideal but the tables along the back wall have plugs and a degree of separation from the main rush. Good for a long session if you can grab one of those back tables.

If you cannot, walk past. The middle tables are too noisy for actual work.

5. Drovers Dog, Elandsgracht

Australian-leaning, brunch-heavy, weekends are unworkable. But — Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, after the lunch wave has cleared, the Drovers is one of the most underrated working spots in the neighbourhood. Plugs, decent wifi, generous seat-to-table ratio.

Order the eggs once and go back six times.

6. Screaming Beans, Hartenstraat

No plugs. By design. The coffee is the best on the list — better than Lot Sixty One, better than Bocca, better than anywhere within a 500-metre radius — and the trade-off is that you are limited to whatever your laptop battery will give you. Roughly a two-hour session.

Counterintuitively this is a good thing. It forces you to actually finish what you came in to do.

What did not make the cut

Two Wieners — beautiful, very good coffee, but the seats are too small for a 13-inch laptop and a notebook. The Coffee Virus — overrated, overlit, and the wifi is sketchy. Vinnies — closed at 16:00, which is exactly when I need a working café most. Café Winkel — go for the apple pie, not the laptop.

A workable Jordaan day

If you actually want to spend a day working from cafés in this neighbourhood, here is what I do:

• 09:30: Toki for the first session, two hours.
• 11:30: walk to Lot Sixty One for an espresso and a change of scene.
• 12:30: lunch at Foodhallen if you can be bothered, or back to the flat if you cannot.
• 14:00: Drovers for the afternoon session, two to three hours.
• 16:30: Screaming Beans for the last hour and a flat white that resets the day.
• 17:30: stop working. Go for a walk along the Brouwersgracht. The day is over.

That is the rotation. It is not the only one. But it is the one that has, somehow, kept me reasonably productive in a city that is mostly trying to convince you to stop working and go for a beer.

If you want events to fill the evenings after the working day ends, the Amsterdam this-week page on Rifio is where I keep my list. The Jordaan does not have many evening events of its own, but Centrum is a five-minute walk and that is most of the city's evening calendar right there.