Eat rijsttafel at Garoeda or Bali for the city’s Indonesian backbone, chase kibbeling and haring at Scheveningen harbour and the herring carts downtown, take your bitterballen in a proper brown café like ‘t Gouden Hooft, wander the Haagse Markt on a Wednesday or Saturday for warm stroopwafels and Surinamese roti, and bring home a bag of Haagse Hopjes instead of a fridge magnet.
The local food worth trying in The Hague is rarely on the trendy fusion menus or candlelit terraces of Denneweg. Look instead for the dishes that built this city’s appetite. The Hague eats like a port town with a colonial memory and a fisherman’s stubbornness: herring off the cart, rijsttafel from generations of Indonesian heritage, and a coffee candy that started life a few streets from the Binnenhof. Eat standing up, with your fingers, or with three friends and too many small dishes on the table.
The Rijsttafel Legacy: The Hague’s Indonesian Soul
No Dutch city eats more Indonesian food, or takes it more seriously, than The Hague. This is history, not fashion. After Indonesian independence, tens of thousands of Indische families (Dutch-Indonesian repatriates) settled here, and the food culture they built never left. You see it in the Indische Buurt, where Javastraat, Bankastraat and Batjanstraat are still lined with toko shops selling frozen lemper, sambal by the jar and dried anchovies. For the full experience, order a rijsttafel (rice table): a dozen or more small dishes, such as rendang, sate ajam, gado-gado, pergedel and egg in peanut sauce, arriving in waves around a mountain of rice. Garoeda, tucked just off the Binnenhof on Kneuterdijk, has been serving it for decades in a dining room that still feels like another era, with starched white tablecloths and waiters who have worked there for ages. Out toward the coast, Restaurant Bali on Badhuisweg in Scheveningen is the other old guard, family-run and unbothered by fashion. Budget roughly €30–€40 per person for a proper rijsttafel with drinks. Plan on two hours at the table: this is not a quick dinner, and that is the point.
Fish Straight Off the North Sea
The Hague is a coastal city that sometimes forgets it, until you walk into Scheveningen harbour and smell the smoke. This is where you eat kibbeling (chunks of battered white fish, usually cod, with garlic or tartar sauce) and lekkerbek (a whole battered fillet) from a paper tray, standing at a metal counter with gulls circling. Simonis, right on the Scheveningen harbourside, is where locals queue, and the length of the line on a Saturday afternoon tells you most of what you need to know. A tray of kibbeling runs roughly €7–€9. Then there is the other North Sea ritual: haring, raw cured herring served with chopped onion and pickles. You can drop it whole down the throat Dutch-style or take it more politely on a soft white roll (broodje haring). Herring carts turn up around the Grote Markt and the Vismarkt (fish market) area, usually for €2.50–€4, depending on whether you get it on bread or on a plate with a toothpick. Try it once, properly, even if the idea unsettles you. It is the most honest bite of Dutch food you will get, and the fishmonger will judge your technique with real warmth if you ask him to show you how.
Bitterballen and the Brown Café Ritual
To understand Dutch drinking culture, start with the bitterbal: a deep-fried ball of ragout, crisp outside, molten and beef-heavy within, brought out six or eight to a plate with mustard on the side for dipping. Its job is to slow the drinking down and get people talking. The best ones come from a bruin café (brown café) rather than a restaurant: dark wood, dim lighting, ceilings that still carry decades of cigarette smoke even though nobody has smoked indoors for years. In the centre, ‘t Gouden Hooft is said to be The Hague's oldest pub. It serves its bitterballen without fuss, backed by a solid list of Dutch beers. Locals tend to order a plate around 5 or 6pm, ahead of the actual dinner hour. It bridges work and evening and is not meant as a meal. A plate of eight will run you roughly €7–€9.
The Haagse Markt and Its Sweet Contraband
On market days (Wednesday and Saturday are the busiest, so check the current schedule), Herman Costerstraat on the edge of the Schilderswijk turns into the Haagse Markt, reputedly the largest outdoor market in the Netherlands, with well over 400 stalls stretching for what feels like a kilometre. It is chaotic and cheap, and one of the most multicultural food experiences in the city, with Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean stalls sitting beside Dutch ones. This is where you find stroopwafels pressed and sold warm off the iron, still soft enough to fold, syrup running down your fingers. They bear no resemblance to the packaged version. It is also a good place to try Surinamese roti or a broodje pom from one of the food stalls. The Hague has a sizeable Surinamese community, and its food shows up in unglamorous, brilliant lunch counters throughout Transvaal and the Schilderswijk. They are well worth a detour if you want something the guidebooks skip.
Haagse Hopjes: The City’s Own Invention
Most visitors never learn this: Haagse Hopjes, the coffee-flavoured toffee found in every Dutch supermarket, originated here. The name comes from Baron Hendrik Hop, an 18th-century resident of The Hague. These small, hard caramel sweets have a genuine coffee kick and are sold by weight in old-fashioned snoepwinkels (sweet shops) around the centre, which makes them a much better souvenir than a keychain. Buy them from a proper confectioner rather than the tourist shops near the Binnenhof, where quality and price tend to work against you.
What Tourists Get Wrong
- Ordering rijsttafel for one. It is built for sharing. Go with at least two people or you will be swimming in leftover sambal.
- Skipping the market for a “safer” lunch. The Haagse Markt stalls are cheaper, fresher and more interesting than most centrum cafés. Bring some cash, since prices are usually lower than a menu elsewhere would lead you to expect.
- Being squeamish about the raw herring. Ask the vendor to cut it into pieces if the whole-fish approach feels like too much. Nobody will think less of you.
- Treating bitterballen as a starter at a sit-down restaurant. They belong in the café, mid-afternoon or pre-dinner, with a beer, not on a formal menu as an appetiser.