Warda

Warda has been on Van Woustraat since 1988, in a stretch of Nieuwe Pijp that mixes flats above with restaurants, bars and small shops below. It's a locals' corner rather than a tourist one, though there's plenty going on around it.

The interior is the surprise. Where most neighborhood shops go for brown wood and low light, Warda's back lounge reads closer to a nightclub: Moroccan couches, neon, trendy wood accents, and a second enclosed smoking lounge behind that. Dutch reviewers reach for words like "absurd" and mean it fondly — the consensus is that the room is unlike anything else in the city and that people leave in a better mood than they arrived. Staff get warm notices consistently.

The menu's strength is kush, across both flower and hash, with a broad selection either side of that. Hash in particular draws praise from visitors who know their Moroccan imports.