Jun 25, 2026
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Taste the Real Netherlands
Your essential guide to Dutch delicacies, from beloved street food to traditional family favourites.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
Every Dutch village has a bell tower, a market square, a brown café, and a bakery older than the country it sits in. The magic of the Netherlands isn’t Amsterdam. It’s the 400 other places that don’t need to try. Places like Thorn, where every house is painted white. Places like Giethoorn, where nobody has ever driven to the shop.
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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In today’s email:
- Dutch Food Guide: What to Eat (and Drink) in the Netherlands
- At The Café — Café Chris — The Oldest Brown Café in the Jordaan
- Around The Web — Best Beaches in the Netherlands: A Complete Guide for Visitors, Dutch Surnames of Zeeland: Origins and Meanings, Eindhoven Day Trip from Amsterdam: Design, Art and Dutch Innovation + more
- From Love Netherlands — Dutch Surnames of Drenthe: Origins and Meanings
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Boerenkaas — The Farmhouse Cheese With a Protected Name
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Dutch Food Guide: What to Eat (and Drink) in the Netherlands
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Dutch food is far more exciting than its understated reputation suggests — a vivid tapestry of hearty winter warmers, sweet street snacks, and centuries of trade-route flavours woven into everyday cooking. Whether you’re wandering an Amsterdam market at dawn, cycling through Gouda, or sitting down to a proper Dutch Sunday dinner, this guide to Dutch food will help you eat like a local every step of the way. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.substack.com What Is Dutch Food Really Like? The Netherlands sits at a crossroads of European culinary traditions, and its food reflects that geography beautifully. For centuries, Dutch trading ships brought spices from Indonesia, salt cod from the North Atlantic, and exotic fruits through the port of Rotterdam. Today, that legacy lives on in richly spiced biscuits, creamy herring…
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At The Café
Café Chris — The Oldest Brown Café in the Jordaan
Café Chris on the Bloemstraat opened in 1624 — making it, depending on whom you ask, the oldest continuously operating bar in Amsterdam. The bell-pull next to the urinal is still wired to the bar, so the bartender knows when to flush. The walls hold framed Ajax memorabilia from the 1970s, and the regulars are mostly Jordaan locals who have been coming since their fathers brought them in for the first jenever. It’s small, it’s loud on Saturday nights, and it’s one of the most authentic brown cafés left in the city.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
Drenthe is one of the oldest parts of the Netherlands. This quiet province in the northeast holds secrets in every farm and field. If your family name comes from Drenthe, you carry ancient history with you. Dutch surnames from Drenthe are unlike those from Amsterdam or Rotterdam. Many come from farms, peat bogs, and small villages. Some are hundreds of years old. Others travelled far — to South Africa, America, and beyond. This guide explores…
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Boerenkaas — The Farmhouse Cheese With a Protected Name
Boerenkaas is the protected designation for cheese made on a Dutch farm with raw milk from that farm’s own cows, by the farmer themselves, with no industrial shortcuts. It tastes nothing like the supermarket Gouda. Younger wheels are creamy and sweet; aged ones develop deep crystalline cracks and a flavour that lingers for minutes. Every Friday, in Alkmaar’s old Waagplein cheese market, you’ll see boerenkaas being weighed on antique scales — a pageant for tourists and a real trade for cheesemakers. Pair it with apple, walnut and a glass of jenever.
👉 Read the full story
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