Cafes and restaurants in Alkmaar

Alkmaar has 395 places, of which 309 publish opening hours, 78 per cent. Of those, 84 per cent open on a Sunday and 41 per cent work past eleven. A website or social account is held by 74 per cent.

The cheese market needs honest treatment. The town won the right to weigh in 1365, the cheese carriers’ guild was founded on 17 June 1593, and the market itself is named officially from 1622. But the real trade stopped about a quarter of a century ago; the weighing, the hand clapping and the carrying are now performance. The kaasvader says so himself.

That does not make it fake. The guild is real: 28 carriers and a kaasvader, split into four teams with red, green, blue and yellow hats, with fines for anyone arriving after seven. What you watch is a weekly reconstruction by tradesmen, not a fairground act.

The cheese, incidentally, does not come from here. Alkmaar never made cheese, only weighed and traded it; an Alkmaar cheese does not exist. What does apply in this province is the protected designation of origin Noord-Hollandse Gouda, held since 1996.

A dish of the town’s own there is not. What there is instead is the North Holland trinity of cheese, herring and beer, and a civic festival on 8 October, the day the siege of 1573 was broken.