Few places in the city have remained as consistently themselves as Café Bern. While the Nieuwmarkt changed completely in nearly five decades, from raw urban neighborhood full of uncertainty surrounding the subway construction to tourist attraction, the café continued to do what it does best. Cheese fondue, prime rib, spaghetti. And an atmosphere you can't fake with an interior designer.
Helmut Winzeler founded Café Bern on August 26, 1978, at precisely the time when the Nieuwmarkt was not an attractive place to start a business. The neighborhood between the end of the Zeedijk and the affected streets around the subway construction was considered a place you preferred to avoid. Winzeler saw it differently. He opened a brown café with a Swiss heart there, and the public found him. After an eight-month renovation, it reopened in April 2015, but its character remained intact.
The building on the Nieuwmarkt combines three things in one: brown café, restaurant and a small hotel. Dark wood, the murmur of people sitting close together at tables, the smell of melted cheese. On the walls, small art exhibitions alternate, recently hanging work as part of ‘The April Bags’ from 2026. It's not a gallery, it's a café that also makes space for art. That's the difference.
The Parool has named Café Bern the best fondue restaurant in town several years in a row, and anyone who has eaten there once understands why.
Reservations are made exclusively by phone. No form, no app, just call. That suits a café that has never tried to move with every new trend. The Nieuwmarkt is the Nieuwmarkt, and Café Bern is Café Bern. For nearly fifty years, the same address, the same dish, the same quirkiness. That's not nostalgia, that's just knowing who you are.