Cafe Koosje – A Restaurant Review

Café Koosje – Plantage Middenlaan 37, 1018 DB Amsterdam, Netherlands 4-17 Pounds

Café Koosje is just a few stops on the tram from the town of Dieman, halfway into the main city of Amsterdam. Located in a quaint residential area full of coffee shops, places to brunch and niche boutiques and shops, Café Koosje has proven to attract a diverse array of customers from all throughout the neighbouring areas.

Featuring a lovely terrace, Café Koosje has become the place for people to see and be seen in this stylish neighbourhood. It prides itself in celebrity customers from TV shows popular in the area and the regular customer base is well dressed and comes with an appetite.

The café’s interior features a standard oak bar, which matches the wood of the walls and doorways. From here the café expands further back with traditional Netherlands artwork and flyers for events in the arts in the area. It is without a doubt the place to be for the artistic and creative soul.

Starting out as spontaneous culinary venture in 2001, it did not take long for Café Koosje to earn her place as a neighbourhood favourite among both the chic young and old crowds. With vast menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as a fully stocked bar, there is not much that Café Koosje leaves its customers wanting for. It provides simple menu options but transforms them into masterpieces that will make your mouth water for weeks after in its traditional Dutch kitchen.

As I mentioned, the menu did not feature any particularly fancy dishes. There for brunch, I was drawn to the Warm Goat Cheese Sandwich with Spinach, Walnut Pesto and Honey as well as the Traditional Dutch Pancake. It was only a natural reaction for me to order both.

Following the old motto, my first bite of food was the dessert pancake topped with homemade crème fraiche. Oh boy. Simple menu options mean nothing when the ingredients they are made from are locally sourced and made to perfection. This “Traditional Dutch Pancake” was so much more than a thinned out pancake or the “XXL” crepe I was expecting to appear in front of me. The cinnamon sweetness of the dough simply leapt off the plate into my mouth forkful after forkful. Compared to the regular sweet crepe dough I had tried in Paris and made in my own kitchen, this dough had a kick that put it on another level entirely. And, of course, you can never go wrong with a few dollops of fresh whipped cream.

After devouring the pancake, I still had more than enough of an appetite to try the Warm Goat Cheese Sandwich. The bread was incredibly thick whole grain with seeds and dried berries and made the sandwich seem quite large. After one bite it was clear that the Dutch understood my insatiable appetite for delicious healthy food. The warm goat cheese danced with the walnut pesto on a bed of spinach in my mouth. The flavour that made this dish more than just a sandwich was the mixture of the warm goat cheese and the walnut. It added just the right amount of sweet to the savoury, and boy do I wish I could go back every week.

Enjoy & Stay Classy! xx