Asian Food in The Netherlands: an introduction

You can find every type of Asian food in The Netherlands and never have to look hard to find a Chinese, Indonesian, Thai, Japanese or Korean restaurant, especially in the big cities. From all the types of foreign food Chinese food is the most popular. However, it is not authentic Chinese cuisine that is served in Holland, it is a Chinese – Indonesian hybrid that was developed after Indonesia became independent from The Netherlands in 1949.

During colonial times the Indonesian “Rijsttafel”, a Dutch word that literally translates to "rice table", became very popular. It consist of a variety of Indonesian dishes accompanied by rice prepared in several different ways. Popular dishes include egg rolls, babi pangang, babi ketjap, sateh, rendang and nasi goreng. It is usually served with krupuk, atjar en serundeng. The rijsttafel was originally created to provide a festive and official type of banquet that would represent the multi-ethnic nature of the Indonesian archipelago.

When Indonesia became independent many Indonesian and Chinese moved to Holland and they brought their cuisine with them. A lot of these immigrants started restaurants where they offered the rijsttafel, adding dishes from Chinese cuisine like tjap tjoi, ku lo yuk and foo yong hai. Most restaurant are now run by Chinese people and the food, although still a mix from Indonesian and Chinese cuisines, is known to Dutch people simply as Chinese food.

The Chinese also adapted the dishes to better suit Dutch taste. This basically meant offering a lot of food for a very cheap price. This was made possible buy using local ingredients instead of importing Chinese products. They also introduced take-away in Holland. As a result Chinese food became known as quick, easy and cheap which made it very popular.  “Met het bord Chinees op schoot Studio Sport kijken”, eating Chinese food on the couch in front of the TV while watching the weekly soccer results on Sunday evening  is a Dutch tradition . “Sambal bij?”  which means “do you want spicy sause with that?” is a catch phrase that every Dutchman knows. Unfortunately,  since quality is less important than price, jokes about disappearing cats around Chinese restaurants are also very common. 

Apart from Vietnamese egg roll which can find at stands on any market square, this Chinese food was basically the only type of Asian food you could get everywhere in the Netherlands until the mid 90’s. But then Holland went through a social and culinary revolution. More immigrants from all over the world came to The Netherlands and a new generation of Dutch people grew up who where tired of eating the same food that there parents ate. Due to the economic boom this generation was also richer and travelled more which enabled them to experience more diverse food. I still remember what an eye (and tastebud) opener it was to eat real Chinese food while on a holiday in China in 2005. This resulted in more ingredients becoming available in the supermarket and a greater diversity of restaurants.

Unfortunately, even today it can still be challenging to find a good Asian restaurant that serves authentic dishes. A lot of Chinese restaurant owners where aware of the changing trends and switched to so called Wok restaurants or Japanese cuisine. For example, one of the two Chinese restaurant in my village switched from Chinese to Korean to Japanese food in the span of two years! Since the chefs of these restaurants are not trained in this style of cooking and offering a lot of food for a low price still is the prevailing business model, the quality is often not that good. This has resulted in Japanese food mostly being associated with all-you-can-eat sushi places. 

Thankfully, if you make effort and do a little online research you can find plenty of restaurants that serve tasty authentic dishes, and their number a growing every day since people are becoming more critical about the quality of their food. Although you will always have a lot of Dutch people who continue to go to the Chinese restaurants around the corner on Sunday evening.