Dutch Cuisine

Dutch cuisine is non-existent, you will not find fancy restaurants where traditional or typical Dutch food is being served. Fancy restaurants will serve international or French oriented dishes. However, this does not mean that there isn't such a thing typical Dutch food or eating habits!

Traditional breakfast and lunch

The traditional Dutch breakfast and lunch consists of one to four slices of bread, a glass of milk and / or thee or coffee. The bread will have some kind of spread on it; jam, peanutbutter, chocolate sprinkles, cheese and ham are typical spreads. Note that the first layer of spread will always be butter! (not mayonaise). A glass of 'karnemelk' (buttermilk) or regular milk and/or thee(without milk) or coffee (with milk) will accompany this meal.

Typical breakfast hours are anywhere between 6 and 9, lunch will be eaten somewhere inbetween 11.30am and 2pm. Inbetween meals typically some fruit or cookies will be eaten.

Traditional dinner

Main ingredients of traditional Dutch dinners are boiled patatoes, vegetables, meat and gravy. After serving dinner a tpyical scenario is the 'mashing' and mixing of the patatoes, vegetables and gravy. Some typical meals like 'hutspot' and 'boerenkool met worst' are served pre-mashed. As a dessert one eats apple sauce and/or yoghurt (plain, chocolate, vanilla or mixed).

Typical dinner hours are between 5pm(real traditional!) and 7pm.

Other Dutch food traditions

Although important, there is more to Dutch food than just mashed patatoes and sandwiches.

Pancake houses

A very typical restaurant is a so called 'pancake house'. In these you can order all kinds of pancakes that are meant to be lunch or dinner meals (not breakfast!). The pancakes differ from American pancakes in size and ingredients and can have many toppings. A pancake variant is the 'poffertjes', which are basically mini pancakes, a real treat - eat with butter!

FEBO

FEBO is the infamous 'deep fried food out of the wall' snack bar chain. Throw your money in the machine and it unlocks a column from which you can pick your favourite snack. At the FEBO you can typically buy the following:

Kroket

Minced meat, cylinder shaped, encased in breadcrumbs and fried. Its outside is crunchy, inside is soft and smooth. There are also kroket balls, called 'bitterballen'. Tastes well with some mustard.

Frikandel

Compare to deep fried hot dog saucage. It consists of beef, chicken, pork and horse meat. The urban legend tells that also a lot of other meat industry left over ingredients go in the frikandel (e.g. testicles, brains, etc.) Try with mayonnaise and curry sauce.

Nasi/Bami schijf

Rice or mi with vegetables and a bit of meat, encased in breadcrumbs and fried.

Fries and mayonnaise

Fries are a popular snack in Holland, they are thicker than French fries and are eaten with mayonnaise sauce. Even better than Dutch fries are the Flemmish (Vlaamse) fries, they are thicker and usually hand-cut at the place where you buy them. Try the peanutbutter sauce combined with mayonnaise, a real treat!

Surinamese

Surinam is a former colony of The Netherlands and nowadays more Surinamse people live in Holland than in Surinam itself! Especially in Amsterdam many people from Surinam are living. This causes the large amount of Surinamese restaurants or 'tokos' or 'Warungs' as they called. Because the Surinames population is a mixture of local bushmen, Africans and Asians the kitchen is really varied and tasty!

Indonesian

Just like Surinam the Indonesian kitchen exists because of the colonial history. The Indonesian kitchen and the Surinam kitchen also share some simularities but have big differences as well. Generally speaking you could say that the Indonesian kitchen is more Asian and the Surinam kitchen more African. A famous Indonesian thing is the 'rice table' as it is literally translated from Dutch. If you order a rice table you order many little dishes that are to be shared with your table partners. You could say it is the Indonesian variant of 'tapaz'. Amsterdam has some very good Indonesian restaurants (both cheap and expensive) that certainly are worth trying out!

Turkish

In the sixties a lot of people migrated to The Netherlands to work in the industries. Their migration enriched the Dutch kitchen and nowadays you'll find a lot of Turkish restaurants and bakeries selling Turkish food. Typical 'Durkish' food is: Turkish pizza, donner kebab, mezza, and the uber-sweet 'Turkish fruit' sweets (baklava).