Albert Cuyp Market: Herring and Kibbeling
Why is it significant?
Turn the corner and look east along the Albert Cuypstraat: a canyon of striped awnings, hanging bags, crates of fruit and the cries of stallholders, running on as far as you can see.
Key Facts
| Place | Albert Cuyp Market: Herring and Kibbeling |
|---|---|
| Address | Albert Cuypstraat at Ferdinand Bolstraat, 1072 Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.35490, 4.89070 |
| Part of Walk | Herring, Stroopwafels and Roti: A Food Walk Through Amsterdam's De Pijp |
| Generated | Generated |
Turn the corner and look east along the Albert Cuypstraat: a canyon of striped awnings, hanging bags, crates of fruit and the cries of stallholders, running on as far as you can see. Somewhere in there a fish stall has a tray of silver fillets on ice, a bowl of chopped onions and a small queue of people who know exactly what they want.
The market began the way most good markets do, without permission. Street traders and pushcarts gathered here as soon as the houses filled up, and in 1905 the city gave in and made it official, at first only on Saturday evenings. From 1912 it ran in daylight, six days a week. The street is named after Aelbert Cuyp, a seventeenth-century painter famous for cows standing in golden evening light. There are no cows here now... but there is plenty of everything else.
Now, the herring. The one to wait for is the Hollandse Nieuwe, the first young herring of the season, caught in early summer when the fish is fat. It is only lightly salted, and the trick that made it possible is old: the fishermen remove the gills and most of the gut, but leave a small organ whose enzymes slowly ripen the fish. Legend credits the method to a fourteenth-century fisherman from Zeeland, Willem Beukelszoon. Herring fed the Dutch and filled their ships, and Amsterdammers like to say their city was built on herring bones.
There are two schools of eating it. The Amsterdam way is chopped into pieces with raw onion and a little pickle. The bold way is to take it by the tail, tilt your head back and lower the whole fillet into your mouth like a sword swallower. If raw fish is a step too far, ask for kibbeling instead: chunks of white fish in batter, fried and served hot with a garlicky sauce, once a way to use up the cheeks and offcuts of salted cod.
Somewhere along this street stands a bronze statue of the singer André Hazes, unveiled in 2005, who was discovered as a boy singing on this market. Walk a short block east along the stalls, then turn left up the Eerste van der Helststraat to a little square full of café tables.