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.
When I first visited The Story Café and Concept Store shortly after it opened, I wrote about the sense of warmth you feel the moment you walk in — the hand-painted walls, the encouraging words on every table, the smell of soup and baking that makes you slow down. But on a second visit, I found something more. Behind the beautiful surface of this café is a woman with a very clear philosophy, and the more time you spend here, the more you understand it.
Meryem Hammiche is, depending on when you catch her, a dietician, a mental health coach and a wellness instructor. “I want people to feel good when they leave here, to also know they have a space where they feel comfortable” she tells me.
Nowhere is this philosophy more evident than in the café’s expanding range of sugar-free bakes and sweet treats. Not “good for sugar-free,” just good. Rich, satisfying banana bread that is paired with mascarpone and chia seed jam and the simple yet light, poppyseed cake which make for a gezellig afternoon treat that is good for mind and body.
But more than just food, tucked into corners and along shelves are beautiful small objects — candles, stationery, interior pieces, handmade cards — all from independent makers and small business owners that Meryem has chosen to platform. The idea is simple: if you’re a small business owner with a well-made product and nowhere to show it, you can reach out to Meryem and she will find a place for it here. It’s a living, rotating shop floor inside a café — and it means that every visit feels slightly different, slightly new. For the makers involved, it’s a chance to get their work in front of the steady stream of locals and regulars who call The Storycafe their own.
The newest addition to The Story Cafe’s offering is one I’m particularly excited about: art workshops, for both children and adults. Given everything else Meryem has built here — the mental health coaching background, the community-first ethos, the café as living room — it makes complete sense. Creative expression, she believes, is another form of nourishment. A way of processing, connecting, and showing up for yourself.
Whether you’re a parent looking for something meaningful for your child on a weekend, or an adult who has been meaning to pick up a brush for years and never quite managed it, this feels like exactly the kind of low-stakes, warm-environment way to start. Details on upcoming sessions are on their Instagram — and given how quickly things tend to fill up at places like this, it’s worth following sooner rather than later. Also on the calendar is a dog-friendly event — imagine a space where your furry friend is truly welcomed and the two of you can enjoy it together.
What strikes me most about The Story Cafe, on this second visit, is how rare it is. It’s easy to open a café. It’s much harder to build something with a genuine point of view — a place where the food, the space, the community and the programming all point in the same direction. Meryem has done that. And The Hague is better for it.
The Story Café and Concept Store is open seven days a week on Appelstraat 175. Small business owners interested in featuring their products in the concept store space can reach out via Instagram. Art workshops for children and adults, dog parties and more are coming soon — follow them so you don’t miss out.
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.
From Friday 28 to Sunday 30 August 2026, Festival TREK returns to the beautiful Westbroekpark, transforming the park into a large open-air restaurant for a weekend of food, drinks, music and entertainment.
Visitors can explore a wide range of food trucks and street food, with everything from sushi and Surinamese dishes to vegetarian options and burgers. There are also several bars, including a cocktail bar, wine bar, Biergarten and Sangria & Bubbels Bar.
Festival TREK is about more than food. Throughout the weekend there will be live music, theatre and performances by emerging artists, alongside nostalgic fairground attractions. As evening falls, the programme continues with funk, soul and dance music.
The festival is free to enter and suitable for all ages.
Say “Indian food” to most people in the West, and a familiar picture comes to mind: takeout containers, a lot of oil, and a spice level that’s either “mild” or “regret.” It’s cheap, it’s convenient, and — the assumption goes — it’s basically all the same, just curry in different colours.
It couldn’t be further from the truth.
India isn’t one cuisine. It’s thousands of them. The country splits into broad geographic zones — north, south, east, west, and the northeast — and each one cooks with entirely different staple grains, techniques, and flavour profiles shaped by its own climate, history, and culture. Kashmiri rogan josh and Chennai-style chicken Madras have about as much in common as a Neapolitan pizza and a Swedish meatball — they’re both “Indian food” the way both those dishes are “European food,” which is to say, technically true and practically meaningless. Travel across the country and the menu changes completely: steamed momo (dumplings) in the northeast, pork with fermented soybean, tangy tamarind-and-coconut curries down south, delicate mustard-and-fish dishes in the east. It’s a tapestry, not a single dish repeated in different sauces.
This is exactly the reputation Vinoth Govind is working to change from his restaurant, Mad’Ras, on Piet Heinstraat. Walk into Mad’Ras and the first thing you notice is that it doesn’t look like most Indian restaurants you’ve been to. Blue ceramic plates are lined precisely along the tables, copper wine goblets catch the light behind the bar. It reads more like fine dining than the casual spots the cuisine usually gets slotted into — and that’s deliberate.
Vinoth never trained formally as a chef. He was, in his own words, always a foodie. While he grew up in Chennai, he visited his grandparents who had a small farm in Tamilnadu, where feeding anyone who walked through the door wasn’t optional, it was the rule. “If you weren’t going to eat here, don’t bother coming,” his grandparents used to say. That ethic of hospitality followed him into a corporate HR career, one that took him and his wife through Singapore, the Philippines, and other parts of Asia before they eventually settled in The Hague in 2022.
But HR is not the industry for someone who believes food is love. Vinoth spent years on the exhausting, emptying task of laying off hundreds of people at a time, and at some point the pull back toward the kitchen got too loud to ignore. He’d already opened restaurants before, in other countries, each time leaving behind a piece of his heart along with the business. He wasn’t planning on starting another one when his wife’s job brought them to the Netherlands. Then he got lost on a walk one day and stumbled onto Piet Heinstraat.
There, he struck up a friendship with Clarence, owner of the café then known as Bij Clarence, and found himself pulled back into the food world almost by accident. A space on the street had just come free — previously home to a Brazilian fusion restaurant run by João Proença — and after six months of work, it became Mad’Ras.
Vinoth is quick to credit the neighbourhood for what came next. Plenty of people doubted a new restaurant could survive in that spot; others had tried and closed before him. But Clarence and João, along with the wider street community, backed him from day one. He now counts them as family, and it’s part of why The Hague, a city he arrived in almost by chance, has stayed close to his heart.
Mad’Ras keeps its menu tight, but each dish carries its own regional identity rather than blending into one generic “Indian” flavour. The lamb rogan josh — Vinoth’s personal favourite — carries a rich, warming character, and the tandoori prawns arrive smoky and char-kissed, in the northern tradition. And the chicken Madras brings the fire and depth of the south.
Crucially, none of it has been dialled down for a Dutch palate. What lands on your table is what you’d be served in Chennai or Kashmir itself — spice included. That said, if heat isn’t your thing, there’s still plenty on the menu to give you an honest taste of the cuisine without watering it down into something unrecognisable. You will also find some iems unique to Mad’Ras, such as the truffle naan which was inspired by Vinoth’s 13 year old daughter – a combination I had doubts about as truffle is often overused in most restaurants or of poor quality – yet paired with dishes like the butter chicken, it was sensational.
Behind that consistency is a kitchen team of four, all trained in five-star hotels across India, and it shows in the precision of every plate. The drinks list carries the same care. The Mad’Ras Tadka cocktail — gin or whisky, lime, sugar, ginger ale, and chaat masala — is light and refreshing, built to stand up against the spiced food rather than disappear next to it. Vinoth’s own love of wine shows up here too, with bottles sourced from further afield than you’d expect, including Georgia and Lebanon, rounding out a drinks menu as considered as the food.
Mad’Ras is the kind of place you find yourself wanting to return to — and to bring everyone you know along with you. It’s comfort food, elevated without tipping into pretension, and Vinoth’s hospitality is evident from the moment you walk through the door. If you’ve been carrying around the wrong idea of what Indian food is, this is exactly where to go to have it corrected. I myself, am of South African-Indian heritage and this place tastes like a mothers embrace.
Vinoth has since moved back to India; however, he continues to operate the restaurant with his dedicated team. Soon, a new menu will be unveiled — one I’m eagerly anticipating.
Piet Heinstraat 97, The Hague
Open for dinner only, Tuesday to Sunday
Images: 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.
There is an Arabic word — baytna — that means our home. It is the kind of word that carries weight: not just four walls and a roof, but the smell of something slow-cooking, the sound of family, the feeling of being truly welcome. For the owner of Baytna Café, Tatjana Sharif, that feeling has a very specific geography. Every summer of her childhood, no matter where life had taken her, she would return to Palestine, the country of her father and his family – and every time, she was reminded of something she has never forgotten. “No one hosts like Palestinians,” she says.
She is right. Palestinian hospitality even has its own name: karam. It is not merely a social custom but a deeply held moral value — the idea that a guest must be offered food and drink before any other conversation takes place, and that turning someone away unfed is simply unthinkable. Walk into Baytna and you will understand immediately that this is not a concept she has left behind. Baytna’s owner is half German, half Palestinian, and has spent much of her life moving between cultures and countries. She studied in the UK, worked in human rights, and carried Palestine with her everywhere she went — in memory, in identity, and eventually, in food. As a child, she was a tomboy and didn’t particularly love cooking. What she loved was eating. Her grandmother made sure of that, quietly and consistently ensuring she was always well fed, always at a full table. It was only later, as a student navigating life abroad, that she began to find her way into the kitchen herself. Cooking, she discovered, was grounding. A way to slow down. A way to feel at home even when home was far away. “It became something that helped me relax,” she says.
Tatjana believes strongly that you shouldn’t force life to move in a particular direction; that when something is right, it finds its shape on its own. The café is proof of that philosophy. What began as a desire to share Palestinian food and culture with her community in The Hague has become something far more alive than a menu. Regulars now message her directly to ask what’s available that day. There’s a warmth to it, a neighbourliness – the kind of relationship between a cook and her community that used to be common and is now rare. Karam, alive and well, in the heart of The Hague.
Step inside Baytna and you are not simply walking into a café – you are walking into someone’s story. On the walls hang tapestries from the Tatjana’s parents’ home: rich, tactile pieces that carry the particular warmth of a family house, the kind of objects that hold memory in their threads. They are not decorative in the conventional sense. They are personal, and that is precisely what makes them so affecting.
It is a small but significant detail. In a city full of beautifully designed spaces, Baytna feels different. The kind of place where the décor has a history and the person who hung it could tell you exactly what it means.
Palestinian cuisine is one of the oldest continuous food cultures in the world, rooted in the Levant and shaped by thousands of years of trade, agriculture, and migration. It is a cuisine of the land — built around olive oil, sumac, slow-cooked meats, and grains — and deeply communal by nature.
At Baytna, the menu draws from this tradition while also reaching across the broader Arab world —the flavours that travel across borders because good food always does. Everything is made with care and intention, and the weekend brunches in particular have become something of a quiet institution. Expect dishes that are rich with spice, slow with flavour, and generous in portion — food that, as she puts it, is for the soul.
Her cooking style is intuitive, shaped by memory and instinct rather than strict recipe, which is reflected in her popular cooking classes. The goal isn’t to follow instructions to the letter but to understand ingredients, trust your senses, and cook the way her grandmother did: from feeling.
The seasonal menu shifts with what’s available and what feels right, which means there is always a reason to return — and her regulars certainly do. The space designed for people to linger. Book clubs meet here. Workshops are hosted here. Companies looking for a warm, characterful venue for team events or off-sites can hire the space, with Baytna providing the food and drinks. The events calendar reflects the owner’s background in community and human rights: thoughtful, inclusive, and always centred on bringing people together. “I love hosting,” she says, and you believe her entirely.
It would be impossible to write about Baytna without acknowledging the weight of this moment in history. Tatjana has lost family in the war. She carries that with her every day. And yet, she remains — extraordinarily — positive and hopeful. What she wants people to understand is this: Palestinian identity is so much richer and deeper than what the news cycle reflects. A people reduced in the global conversation to conflict alone lose something essential — their food, their laughter, their legendary hospitality, their culture of gathering and feeding and welcoming strangers as family. A quiet, delicious act of reclamation. A reminder that Palestinians are warm and loving people with a food culture worth celebrating — one plate, one gathering, one shared meal at a time. And on the walls, the tapestries from her parents’ home bear quiet witness to all of it. Every dish served here is a small piece of that story.
Baytna Café is located on Piet Heinstraat 112 and is open for weekend brunches as well as private events, workshops, and community gatherings. Follow them on Instagram for updates on seasonal menus, upcoming events, and daily specials.
Images: Sherika Rooplal-Clappers and provided by Baytna cafe
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.
From the outside, the name gives nothing away. Café Marlo has no direct meaning, but it carries a sound close to the Japanese word maroyaka – meaning soft, warm, or mild. Walking in, I can confirm: the name fits perfectly.
This is The Hague’s newest Japanese café, and it is not what you might expect. There is no sushi here, no elaborate omakase, no long tasting menus. What Café Marlo offers instead is something far more personal: the food that Japanese people actually eat every day. The kind of food a mother makes. Nourishing, light, honest food that is good for your body.
Start with the matcha. Café Marlo uses two types – ceremonial grade for hot drinks and Shizuoka which pairs better with milk for everyday drinks. If you know your matcha, you will taste the difference immediately. If you don’t, this is a very good place to start learning.
The must-order, is the fruit sando. A Japanese fruit sandwich sounds like something that should not work – and then you take one bite and understand immediately why it has become a cult item across Japan and, slowly, across the world. Soft milk bread, lightly sweetened cream, seasonal fruit. It is simple in the best possible way.
For something more substantial, the onigiri is your answer. Café Marlo focuses on fresh, handmade onigiri served warm – which is how it should be eaten. If you have been reaching for sushi as your go-to Japanese option, consider this your gentle nudge to try something closer to what actually fills Japanese tables at lunchtime. Rice, filling, nori. Healthy, satisfying, completely unpretentious.
Café Marlo sits on Hooikade, and the location alone is reason enough to visit. The canal-side setting, the cobalt blue door, the sense that you have stepped somewhere slightly removed from the rest of the city – it makes the whole experience feel like a small escape. The kind of place you find yourself wanting to return to on a slow Tuesday when you need something that feels good.
The owners are genuinely lovely. You feel that from the moment you walk in – there is a care here that goes beyond the food, a sense that this café was opened because these two people truly love what they do and want to share it.
Café Marlo is located at Hooikade 1, The Hague. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm. Find them on Instagram
Go for the matcha. Stay for the fruit sando. Leave feeling, as the name promises, warm.
Images: 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.
