Venue provided complimentary food and drinks during Sherika’s visit for this feature. The Hague Online retained editorial control, and the views expressed are the writer’s own
Ask most people about their favourite part of a meal and the answer comes quickly: dessert. Yet at most restaurants, it’s the last thing on the table and the first thing we skip when we’re full. The Dessert Room turns that around.
The idea behind The Dessert Room belongs to Richard Morris, an American who grew up in Chicago and has spent nearly thirty years living abroad. It began on a quiet late-autumn evening, when his then ten-year-old daughter wanted ice cream from their neighbourhood ice-cream parlour, and couldn’t understand why it was closed until spring.
Her question brought back a childhood ritual. In Chicago, families like Richard’s would head out after weekend dinners to enjoy dessert. Something sweet was reason enough for a night out, and it was a tradition he had missed for decades. It reminded me of my own childhood, when we would go to Milky Lane for ice cream and waffles. My fellow South Africans will know exactly what I mean.
The more he thought about it, the more he noticed a gap. The Netherlands has extraordinary restaurants, pastry chefs, and chocolatiers, but remarkably few places where dessert itself takes centre stage, where the final course becomes the main event.
The Dessert Room is an evening tasting experience devoted entirely to dessert: three courses, each paired with a drink, created by exceptional local chefs and restaurants. The line-up changes with every edition, which makes each one an intimate occasion and a chance to discover pastry talent and new flavours. New for those who want to make a full night of it, guests can now enjoy a light dinner beforehand and drinks afterwards.
My first course was a bright, citrusy orange roulade with orange curd and chocolate cream. It came paired with a tequila sunrise, a playful and clever match that echoed the orange in the dessert and set a fun tone for the night.
The second course was a beautifully constructed dessert cube of trifle, layered with almond chiffon, raspberry compote, and jasmine cream and paired with a raspberry and almond cordial. The jasmine gave it a delicate floral note, and the cordial tied the flavours together without overwhelming them. Both courses created by new Patissier-in-Residence, Murit Sonneveld Mak.
The final course was a rich chestnut mousse with dark chocolate and cognac caramel, by guest chef Justin Koopman of Aan de Zweth. It was served with a brut Selección cava, whose crisp bubbles cut through the richness and made it the perfect way to end the night.
What I loved most is how The Dessert Room gives dessert the attention it rarely gets. There is no pressure to save room and no rushing to the finish line. You can linger over something sweet, talk about it, and discover something new from the chefs behind it. The food was fantastic, and the evening felt warm and celebratory, as though sweetness really is reason enough to go out.
From one simple request for ice cream has grown a different kind of night out, one where the final course becomes the first reason to go.
*I was kindly invited to experience this meal, and as always, my thoughts are honest and entirely my own
The Dessert Room takes place once a month, upstairs at Cafe Paloma ( Anna Paulownaplein 1), with the autumn edition scheduled for 18 November. Find out more here
Photos: Sherika Rooplal-Clappers.
Do you have a story about your own café, restaurant or bar in the city? Reach out to sherika@thehagueonline.com to possibly be featured.
Sherika Rooplal-Clappers is a contributing writer for The Hague Online, covering culture, lifestyle, and local events. With a passion for storytelling and international perspectives, she highlights the people, places, and experiences that make The Hague a dynamic city.
Venue provided complimentary food and drinks during Sherika’s visit for this feature. The Hague Online retained editorial control, and the views expressed are the writer’s own
Some restaurants feed you. The great ones transport you. La Bruschetta & Co, tucked along The Hague’s charming Denneweg, is in the second category. From the moment you walk in, something shifts. The walls are lined with photographs of Puglia — sun-bleached coastlines, dusty piazzas, the kind of images that make you want to book a flight immediately. Copper pots and pans hang overhead, a gift from the owner Francesca’s father, and the whole space carries the warmth of a family kitchen rather than a restaurant. Informal, cosy, and entirely unpretentious — this is exactly the kind of place you want to find on evening out.
Francesca opened La Bruschetta in 2018, leaving her home region of Puglia in search of new opportunities and a bigger life. She brought with her something that cannot be manufactured: a deep, lifelong relationship with food. Growing up in the south of Italy, cooking was not a skill you learned from a book — it was something absorbed at the kitchen table, passed down through generations, inseparable from family and memory. That upbringing is present in every dish that leaves her kitchen.
In the early days of La Bruschetta, Francesca’s mother would make fresh pasta by hand in front of the restaurant window — and locals along the Denneweg would stop to watch. It is one of those details that tells you everything you need to know about what this place is built on. Today, nearly 90% of the staff are from Puglia, which perhaps explains why the experience feels so cohesive and genuine.
The menu leans heavily into the traditions of Apulian cooking, and the pasta is where La Bruschetta really earns its reputation. It is, without question, the course most recommended by regulars — and having tried both the seafood pasta and the Tartufo truffle pasta on my visit, I understand why completely. The seafood pasta was rich and deeply flavoured. The truffle pasta was elegant and indulgent in equal measure and quite the theatrical watching it being prepped in the giant parmesan rind before being elegantly plated. Both felt entirely authentic — not the watered-down version of Italian cooking so often found elsewhere, but the real thing.
The grilled rib eye was equally impressive – well-rested, and treated with the respect good meat deserves. The mixed seafood platter was light, cooked well and included a good variety. And then there were the desserts, classics like tiramisu and sgroppino, which I will simply say should not be skipped under any circumstances. The wine list is well-considered and the mocktails are a thoughtful touch for those not drinking.
What strikes you most by the end of the meal is how rare it is to find a place that has held onto its identity so firmly. Eight years in, La Bruschetta still feels like a small, family-run restaurant in the south of Italy — the kind of place where the owner knows the regulars by name, the recipes haven’t changed because they don’t need to, and the food on your plate carries the weight of real tradition behind it.
The Denneweg is already one of The Hague’s most beloved streets. La Bruschetta & Co is one of the very good reasons why.
La Brushetta & Co is open for lunch and dinners Tuesday – Saturdays on Denneweg 57. Follow them on Instagram to stay updated
Photos: Sherika Rooplal-Clappers
Do you have a story about your own café, restaurant or bar in the city? Reach out to sherika@thehagueonline.com to possibly be featured.
Sherika Rooplal-Clappers is a contributing writer for The Hague Online, covering culture, lifestyle, and local events. With a passion for storytelling and international perspectives, she highlights the people, places, and experiences that make The Hague a dynamic city.
Invited by the venue to experience the workshop. The Hague Online retained editorial control, and the views expressed are the writer’s own
Ever wanted to make pasta, pizza or focaccia from scratch? Well, its easier than you think.
I recently attended a pizza-making workshop with Macché in The Hague, and left with flour on my hands, a very full stomach, and the warm, slightly chaotic feeling of having spent an afternoon in someone’s Italian grandmother’s kitchen. In the best possible way.
Macché is the brainchild of couple Antonella Cerroni , originally from the south of Italy, and Alessandra Soro, who hails from Rome. The two have been living in the Netherlands for around ten years, and the story of how Macché came to be is as charming as the workshops themselves. When the couple were saving up for their wedding, a friend asked them to teach her how to cook. The idea planted a seed — why not share what they knew with more people? What started as a way to save for a wedding became a genuine passion for watching others discover the joy of Italian cooking. Later, they were joined by Daniele Di Bella from Sicily, who had moved abroad to The Netherlands wanting to experience life in a new country. With a background in Michelin-starred restaurants and previously head baker positions, Daniele brought an added layer of craft and expertise to the team.
Macché is coming up on its first year, and already the Italian community in The Hague — which, it turns out, is a significant and tight-knit one — has embraced it warmly. Antonella tells me that whenever you mention you’re from Italy, people in the city simply light up.
What makes Macché stand out, beyond the warm and welcoming atmosphere, is that all of their workshops are entirely vegan. This might surprise some, but it really shouldn’t — Italian cooking has been naturally plant-forward for centuries.
Long before “plant-based” became a trend, the culinary tradition known as cucina povera — literally, “the cooking of the poor” — was the backbone of Italian food culture. In the rural and working-class communities of the south, particularly in Puglia, Calabria, Campania, and Sicily, families ate what they could grow or store: legumi such as beans, lentils, and chickpeas; wild greens; tomatoes; garlic; onions; ancient grains like farro; and always, always olive oil. Meat was a luxury that most simply could not afford. Livestock required land, feed, and resources that peasant families did not have — and when animals were kept, they earned their place through labour, milk, or eggs rather than ending up on the table. When meat did appear, it was typically reserved for major religious holidays, weddings, or the occasional Sunday feast, and even then used sparingly to flavour a large pot of stew rather than served as a centrepiece in its own right.
What cucina povera also gave us was an extraordinary philosophy of zero waste. Stale bread was never discarded — it was transformed into dishes that have since become icons of Italian cooking: ribollita, the hearty Tuscan bread and vegetable soup; pappa al pomodoro, a thick, warming tomato and bread soup; or ground into a crunchy topping for pasta in place of expensive grated cheese. Ingenuity, not abundance, was the mother of invention.
Antonella and Alessandra grew up cooking this way, learning around a family table in the way so deeply typical of Italian culture. Macché simply makes that tradition visible — and celebrated.
Looking ahead, Macché is planning a series of events that will take guests on a culinary journey through all the regions of Italy — a reminder of just how vast and varied Italian food culture truly is. From the butter-rich risottos of the north to the sun-soaked tomato sauces of Sicily, Italy is not one cuisine but many, and Macché wants to show The Hague all of them.
Whether you’re an experienced cook or someone who has never attempted fresh dough in their life, a Macché workshop offers something rare: the feeling of being welcomed into someone’s home, fed well, and sent back into the world a little happier than when you arrived. On the day, we made two pizzas — a tomato base with lemon ricotta, aubergine, and basil, and a white pizza with béchamel sauce, fried leeks, and parsley. Unexpected combinations, and so satisfying that you completely forget every ingredient on the table is vegan.
Photos by: Sherika Rooplal-Clappers
Keep an eye on their Instagram for upcoming regional tasting events — and book a workshop via their website – be quick as spaces fill up fast. Tip! A workshop also makes a great gift for the coming festive season
Do you have a story about your own café, restaurant or bar in the city? Reach out to sherika@thehagueonline.com to possibly be featured.
Sherika Rooplal-Clappers is a contributing writer for The Hague Online, covering culture, lifestyle, and local events. With a passion for storytelling and international perspectives, she highlights the people, places, and experiences that make The Hague a dynamic city.
Venue provided complimentary food and drinks during Sherika’s visit for this feature. The Hague Online retained editorial control, and the views expressed are the writer’s own
There’s a particular kind of idea that only makes sense once someone says it out loud: build an entire menu around the potato, in a country that eats them almost daily. At Potato Batata, tucked away on Maliestraat 1, that’s exactly what you can expect.
Lama Yazbeck, the owner of Potato Batata, is Lebanese born and bred. She arrived in the Netherlands five years ago, settling first in Amsterdam, where she found much of the food lacking in flavour and variety. When she moved to The Hague two years ago, she knew she wanted to bring something new to the city.
Foto: Anouk BoutenFoto: Anouk Bouten
Back in Lebanon, she had worked mostly in the NGO sector, but she also made and sold chocolate truffles from home as a side gig, and she enjoyed every minute of it. Eventually, she felt the calling to get back into food. This time, the question was what. So Lama did what many of us do when we’re searching for direction: she sat down with her mother and started listing meals.
Somewhere in that list, a pattern appeared. Potatoes kept turning up. In Lebanon, she told me, the potato isn’t a main ingredient, more of a supporting player. But the more they wrote, the more the idea made sense. The Netherlands loves its potatoes, and the quality is excellent. Why not take an ingredient the city already trusts and let it carry an entire menu?
It’s a lovely piece of reasoning, and a very expat one: start with what you know from home, and make it work for the place you’re in now.
The menu is potato from start to finish, with a Lebanese and Mediterranean flavour profile. There are wraps, potato salad, quiche-inspired pies, soufflé and, for dessert, a sweet potato pie. “All potato” sounds unusual, but the range is wider than you’d expect, and it’s clear that real thought went into moving one ingredient through savoury, comforting and sweet flavours.
I tried three dishes:
The messy potato wrap, filled with roast potatoes, coleslaw, pickles and lettuce, and served with a tangy sauce. Be warned: it is indeed messy!
The rustic potato pie, which is similar to a quiche, with basil, cherry tomatoes and olives running through the filling. The crust, made in-house, was flaky and perfectly cooked.
The sweet potato pie, which closes the meal and shows off the sweet potato in a lovely dessert.
The first thing you notice about the flavours here is how gentle they are. Lebanese cooking is often bold with garlic, lemon and fresh herbs, however here the food is simple and mild, comforting rather than punchy: the basil and olives in the rustic pie are present but polite, and the tangy sauce on the wrap is the liveliest flavour on the plate. All in line with a more Dutch palette.
Many items on the menu are homemade, like the hummus, and gluten free. Meat lovers, fear not: marinated beef is available and can be added to your meal. Around 90% of the ingredients are locally sourced, the meat is halal, and vegans will find great options too.
Foto: Anouk BoutenFoto: Anouk Bouten
Potato Batata is a place for a relaxed lunch, for anyone curious about a new concept, and for potato lovers, of whom The Hague has plenty. What it has is a clear idea, a personal story behind it, and a gentle, approachable take on Lebanese flavours.
Go for the crust, the comfort, and a menu that makes one humble ingredient do a surprising amount of work. Potato Batata has only been open for a few weeks, but plenty more is in store. They offer catering for events, and from November will be serving early dinners from 16:30 to 18:30, with more seasonal dishes such as mashed potatoes.
Photos provided by Lama Yazbeck/ Anouk Bouten for Potata Batata
Potato Batata is open for lunch on weekdays at Maliestraat 1 . Follow them on Instagram to stay updated
Do you have a story about your own café, restaurant or bar in the city? Reach out to sherika@thehagueonline.com to possibly be featured.
Sherika Rooplal-Clappers is a contributing writer for The Hague Online, covering culture, lifestyle, and local events. With a passion for storytelling and international perspectives, she highlights the people, places, and experiences that make The Hague a dynamic city.
More than 600 food systems professionals, policymakers, researchers and entrepreneurs from the Netherlands and around the world will gather in The Hague on Tuesday 20 October 2026 for the eighth edition of NFP World Food Day.
Taking place at the Fokker Terminal, this international event explores how collaboration can help build fairer, healthier and more sustainable food systems, particularly through partnerships with countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Organised by Netherlands Food Partnership (NFP), in cooperation with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature, the event’s theme is Partnerships that Feed the Future: Facing Today’s Reality, Taking Action for Tomorrow.
Addressing Global Food Challenges
Climate change, droughts, flooding, conflicts and disruptions to international supply chains continue to put pressure on global food security.
NFP World Food Day brings together representatives from government, business, research institutions and civil society to explore practical solutions and strengthen international cooperation.
Among the speakers are Dr Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli, a Nigerian entrepreneur and expert in agriculture, nutrition and social innovation, and Steven Collet from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Journalist, presenter and filmmaker Ikenna Azuike will host the event.
An Interactive Programme
Alongside keynote presentations and panel discussions, the event features interactive sessions, practical examples and networking opportunities.
Programme highlights include:
Partnerships that Finance the Future: Exploring how seed companies and other agricultural businesses can access investment and overcome financing challenges.
From Partnerships to Delivery: Examining how international cooperation can lead to practical improvements in food security.
The International Year of the Female Farmer: Highlighting the contributions, experiences and challenges of women working in agriculture.
Resilience Food Stories: Sharing experiences from farmers and food communities across 22 countries.
Leadership from Within: Exploring personal leadership, reflection and approaches to creating meaningful change.
Participants can also meet potential partners and connect with organisations working on food systems innovation.
Practical Information
Date: Tuesday 20 October 2026
Time: 10:00–18:00
Location: Fokker Terminal, Binckhorstlaan 249, The Hague
Admission: Free and open to interested participants, including those involved in food systems, agriculture, sustainability and international development. Advance registration is required, and places may be limited.
The smell hits you before anything else on Lange Voorhout — charcoal smoke curling off satay grills, the sweet-sharp tang of sambal, someone’s kroket frying two stalls down. This is Jalan Pedis, the culinary spine of Jalan Jalan festival, and for three days in August it turns one of The Hague’s grandest streets into something closer to a Jakarta night market — if a Jakarta night market had also absorbed seventy years of Dutch history along the way.
Indonesian roots, Dutch soil, something entirely its own is exactly what Jalan Pedis, the food festival at the heart of the wider Jalan Jalan organisation, is built to hold. Vanja van der Leeden, one of its organizers shares her hopes for the festival and beyond. Vanja is a chef and cookbook author, and when I sat down with her, I expected a straightforward conversation about food. What I got instead was a family history that doubles as a history of this city’s largest, quietest diaspora.
Vanja grew up in The Hague of Indisch origin — the term for the mixed Dutch-Indonesian community that has shaped this city since the mid-20th century, when hundreds of thousands of people left the newly independent Indonesia for a Netherlands many of them had never actually lived in. Her grandmother, she told me, wasn’t much of a cook. Her mother cooked, but only ever from recipes — nothing improvised, nothing passed down by feel. What Vanja absorbed growing up was Indisch cooking: the Dutch-Indies hybrid cuisine that Indo families built for themselves after arriving here, working with whatever ingredients they could find, filling the gap where a formal food culture for their community simply didn’t exist yet.
It’s a detail that says more about this city than any timeline could. The Hague earned the nickname “Weduwe van Indië” — Widow of the Indies — because so many repatriates from the former Dutch East Indies settled here after 1949, and especially after Indonesia’s more nationalist turn in the late 1950s pushed out remaining Dutch nationals. You can still read it in the street names of the Archipelbuurt — Javastraat, Sumatrastraat — and in the toko shelves stocked with ingredients that had nowhere else to exist in Dutch supermarkets. But Vanja’s story is a reminder that what took root here wasn’t a transplanted Indonesian cuisine. It was something new, built from memory, scarcity, and improvisation. Indisch food, not Indonesian food — a distinction that matters more than it might sound.
What she didn’t grow up with, Vanja went looking for later. She travelled to Indonesia and spent time learning from some of the country’s most respected chefs — encountering, in many cases for the first time, the cooking her own family’s version had been adapted from. She brought that research home and eventually shaped it into a cookbook: Indo Rock, named for the food and the music of the Indo-Dutch community — a nod to the genre Indo musicians helped build in the Netherlands in the 1950s and 60s, guitars and all, as well as how Vanja is bringing some rock n roll to cooking. It’s a neat structure for a life’s work: grow up on the adapted version, go find the source, then write the book that puts them in conversation with each other. In fact, Vanja brought her copy of Indo Rock to our meeting for exactly this reason — to show, concretely, how a traditional recipe can move into the present without losing what makes it what it is.
That balancing act is really the whole culinary mission behind Jalan Pedis. Vanja was careful to spell it out: this isn’t only an Indisch food festival. The ambition is to show the full breadth of the diaspora’s cuisines side by side — Indisch, Indonesian, Moluccan, Papuan, Surinamese-Javanese, Peranakan — and to give more room than usual to Indonesia’s own vast regional variety, which rarely gets represented in full outside the archipelago itself. Memory and nostalgia matter deeply here — Vanja’s own story makes that obvious — but she’s just as focused on the third and fourth generation: the visitors and creators who are taking these cuisines somewhere new. Knowing where the food comes from, in other words, without treating that as the end of the story. The world will continue to evolve and grow and it only makes sense that this food and its chefs, evolve and grow with it.
Vanja wants Jalan Pedis to grow — not just in size, but in what it’s asking of the people who show up. Her hope is straightforward: that each year, it pulls a few more people into actually understanding the community and the history behind the food, rather than just eating it. Last year’s smaller preview, a single afternoon of Jalan Pedis on Lange Voorhout, drew far more visitors than organizers expected — toko and Indisch restaurants across the city reportedly saw the overflow. This year’s expanded, three-day edition of the broader Jalan Jalan Festival, spread across Filmhuis Den Haag, Museum Sophiahof, GR8, and Pulchri Studio, felt like the festival catching up to the appetite that was already there.
Standing on Lange Voorhout with a paper plate of nasi, it’s easy to just enjoy the festival as a festival — good food, good music, a packed street on a warm August evening. And that’s fine. But talking to Vanja, I kept coming back to her grandmother, the one who wasn’t much of a cook, and her mother, cooking carefully from recipes because nothing else had been handed down. Somewhere between them and Vanja’s cookbook is the story of an entire community rebuilding a cuisine — and by extension an identity — from scratch, in a country that didn’t always make space for it to happen.
Jalan Jalan, at its best, is that rebuilding made visible for a weekend. And if Vanja gets her way, it’ll only get bigger from here.
Who was cooking at Jalan Pedis
Part of what makes the festival worth returning to year after year is the sheer range on offer — home cooks alongside restaurant kitchens, Moluccan specialities next to fusion experiments. Here’s who was serving this year:
Food tuk — Saté ajam / babi / kambing / tempeh as full portions, with lontong, atjar, homemade satésaus, fried onions, kentang, and pandan cake
Gina Bratawidjaja — Homemade Indonesian iced drinks, including ijs rujak pedis, ijs tjendol durian, ijs campur, ijs klepon, ijs kelapa muda/dawet, and ijs aardbei
Saté Bar on Tour (from restaurant Sarinande in The Hague) — Everything off the BBQ: ikan bakar, half chicken, ribs, saté
Ins&Outs Catering — Pisang goreng, lemper and an Indo bar platter (maize cakes, loempia, pangsit, pastei, and more)
Organisatie Jalan Jalan — The Jalan Bites bus, serving fusion bites like Indo tostadas with chicken rendang and acar, spicy aubergine with basil, and salmon with Balinese sambal matah, alongside babi pangang ribs with mango sambal and pecel made from roasted pointed cabbage with lontong and krupuk
Indische curryworst — A caterer from Uitgeest
Coffee on Wheels (Mark Zevenbergen, Kim Padding) — Coffee truck and warm drinks
De Indo / Hangry Foodtruck (from Scheveningen) — Sandwiches and sate
El Careto – pandan tiramisu fusion from the mobile chef often found on Lange Voorhout
Vanja’s picks for Indonesian food beyond the festival
If Jalan Jalan leaves you wanting more, Vanja’s own go-to spots are a good place to start — a mix of Hague institutions and Amsterdam detours:
Warung Lapek Jo (The Hague)
De Javaan (The Hague)
Trio Eethuis (The Hague)
Martabak House (The Hague)
Paon Bali (Amsterdam)
Warung Pas (Amsterdam)
Warung Indonesia (Haagse Markt)
Follow Vanja on Instagram and grab one of her cookbooks here
Photos provided by: Vanja van der Leeden on behalf of photographers Nina Akollo, Hans Mahler and Rosa van Leeuwen
Do you have a story about your own café, restaurant or bar in the city? Reach out to sherika@thehagueonline.com to possibly be featured.
Sherika Rooplal-Clappers is a contributing writer for The Hague Online, covering culture, lifestyle, and local events. With a passion for storytelling and international perspectives, she highlights the people, places, and experiences that make The Hague a dynamic city.
