May 07, 2026
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The Dutch Coastal Province Where the World’s Best Mussels Begin
Why Zeeland produces Europe’s finest mussels — and the Dutch town the whole world buys from
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
Somewhere in the Netherlands right now, someone is pouring a pint of something dark — perfectly. Somewhere, a tulip field is waiting to bloom. Somewhere, a baker is sliding the first tray of stroopwafels onto the counter while the smell fills the whole street. The Dutch don’t make a fuss. They just make things the way their parents and their parents’ parents made them.
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Image: Shutterstock
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In today’s email:
- The Dutch Coastal Province Where the World’s Best Mussels Begin
- At The Café — Café De Klomp — The Oldest Café in Friesland
- Around The Web — Why the Dutch Have a Word for This Feeling — and Nobody Else Does and more
- From Love Netherlands — The Dutch Pottery That Copied China — and Now China Copies Back
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Kibbeling — The Dutch Fried Cod From the Fish Stall
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The Dutch Coastal Province Where the World’s Best Mussels Begin
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Every August, the Dutch make a quiet pilgrimage south. They load up the car, drive past Rotterdam, and keep going until the land starts to dissolve into water. They are heading to Zeeland. Some go for the beaches. Some go for the silence. But the ones who really know go for the mussels. What Makes Zeeland Mussels Different The answer is the Oosterschelde — a wide tidal estuary that opens directly into the North Sea. Every tide pushes in cold, clean, mineral-rich water. Mussels filter enormous volumes of this water. They feed on the phytoplankton and algae that the tides carry in. They grow slowly. That slow growth is exactly the point. A Zeeland mussel develops a firm, dense texture and a deep briny flavour that mussels raised in calmer, warmer water simply cannot match. No shortcuts. No heating tanks. Just the Oosterschelde doing what it has done for centuries. The mussels hang on…
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At The Café
Café De Klomp — The Oldest Café in Friesland
Café De Klomp in Leeuwarden’s old centre has been pouring beer since 1620, making it Friesland’s oldest continuously running pub. The room is small and dark with wooden tables polished by four centuries of elbows. Frisian is spoken behind the bar and at half the tables — a separate language, not a Dutch dialect. Order a glass of Beerenburg, the local herb-infused jenever, and listen to a Saturday afternoon unfold around you in a language most Dutch people don’t speak either.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
Walk into almost any souvenir shop in Amsterdam. You’ll find it on every shelf. Blue and white pottery, windmills painted in cobalt, a little Dutch house. The label reads “Delftware.” Turn it over. The base says “Made in China.” The irony runs deeper than you might expect. Where Delftware Actually Came From In the 1600s, Dutch merchants were obsessed with Chinese porcelain. The fine white clay, the vivid cobalt blue, the delicate patterns —…
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Image: Shutterstock
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Kibbeling — The Dutch Fried Cod From the Fish Stall
Kibbeling is bite-sized chunks of cod, dipped in spiced beer batter and deep-fried until the outside crackles and the fish inside flakes apart. Every fish stall in every Dutch town square sells it, served in a paper cone with a small pot of garlic-and-mustard whitlofsaus. There’s nothing quite like the first bite on a cold afternoon, salt and crisp and steam all in one go. Dutch fried fish is taken seriously here — every region has its own batter recipe, and the truly local stalls cook to order rather than pre-frying.
👉 Read the full story
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