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The Netherlands is not Italy, where coffee is a ritual. It is not France, where coffee is an excuse to sit down. It is, oddly, somewhere in between — and it’s almost always served with a small, unassuming, extraordinary biscuit called a stroopwafel.
The coffee
The Dutch drink more coffee per person than almost any country in Europe. The word for coffee break in Dutch — “koffiepauze” — isn’t a casual phrase; it’s a semi-official part of the working day. Offices, cafés, building sites, and farms all stop mid-morning for koffie, and again mid-afternoon. Refusing a coffee when offered one in a Dutch home is considered slightly odd.
The coffee itself is straightforward: filter-style, strong but not Italian-strong, served black or with a little milk. Don’t expect elaborate latte art or fancy espresso drinks in most places. What you’ll get is a good, solid, reliable cup of coffee, served hot.
The stroopwafel
And every cup, almost without exception, comes with a stroopwafel. Small cafés, big hotels, airport lounges, train stations — a coffee order in the Netherlands usually arrives with a thin, round, caramel-filled waffle cookie balanced on the saucer.
A stroopwafel is two thin layers of spiced waffle dough with a layer of warm caramel syrup (“stroop” — thick, dark, slightly spiced) sandwiched between them. The original recipe dates from the early 19th century in Gouda, where a baker was looking for a way to use up leftover crumbs and bits of dough. He pressed them into a thin waffle iron, cut them open, and filled them with leftover syrup. The result became one of the most famous Dutch snacks in the world.
The correct way to eat one
Place the stroopwafel on top of your coffee cup. Let it sit there for a minute. The steam rises through the waffle and warms the caramel inside, softening it just enough to turn the whole cookie into something between a biscuit and a pudding. Now pick it up. Now eat it.
Every Dutch person knows this. It’s not in any tourist guide, but it is universally understood. The first time you watch someone do it, and the first time you try it yourself, you suddenly understand why a nation not otherwise given to ceremony has turned a biscuit into a small ritual.
Buy them fresh, if you can. The best stroopwafels are still the ones you find at market stalls in places like Gouda or Amsterdam’s Albert Cuypmarkt — sold warm, with the caramel still soft, wrapped in wax paper. They cost a few euros, and they’re the best thing you’ll eat in the Netherlands that isn’t a meal.