The Hague

Indonesian rijsttafel

A spread of many small Indonesian dishes with rice, developed in Dutch colonial Indonesia and kept alive in The Hague by its large Indo-Dutch community.

Rijsttafel — literally 'rice table' — is a meal of many small dishes (curries, satay, vegetables, sambals) served together around a central pot of rice, a format created for Dutch colonial households in the Dutch East Indies rather than a traditional Indonesian way of eating. The Hague has the country's largest concentration of Indo-Dutch families, many of whom arrived after Indonesian independence in 1945–49, which is why the city's Indonesian food scene runs deeper than the usual Dutch high-street toko.

It is the clearest link between the city's food and its specific colonial and migration history, not a generic Asian-food detour.

Long-established Indonesian restaurants across the city, particularly around the centre.

Haagse hopjes

A coffee-flavoured caramel sweet said to be named after an 18th-century Hague family.

Haagse hopjes are hard, coffee-flavoured caramels, traditionally credited to the household of Hendrik Hop, an 18th-century diplomat, whose staff are said to have made a coffee-and-sugar sweet that later took his name. They are one of the few food items genuinely specific to The Hague rather than borrowed from wider Dutch food culture.

Traditional confectioners and department-store food halls in the centre.

Kibbeling

Bite-sized pieces of battered, deep-fried white fish, a North Sea coastal snack rather than a Hague invention.

Kibbeling is battered and fried chunks of white fish, usually cod or haddock, served in a paper tray with a garlic or tartare-style sauce. It began as a way of using cod cheeks and offcuts and is now a standard coastal snack; The Hague's proximity to the fishing harbour at Scheveningen makes it an easy, unpretentious thing to eat by the sea.

Fish stalls along the Scheveningen harbour and boulevard.

Haring

Raw, lightly salt-cured young herring, a Dutch snack rather than a Hague speciality, sold from carts across the city.

Hollandse Nieuwe herring is cured briefly rather than cooked and served with chopped onion and pickle, traditionally eaten by the tail or in a bread roll (broodje haring). It is a national tradition rather than something specific to The Hague, but fixed herring carts are common around the centre and Scheveningen.

Herring carts near the centre and along the Scheveningen boulevard.

Haagse Markt

One of Europe's largest street markets, in the Transvaal neighbourhood, reflecting the city's mixed population.

The Haagse Markt runs several days a week in the Transvaal district and is one of the largest open-air markets in Europe, with stalls selling Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan, Indonesian and Dutch food side by side. It is a working neighbourhood market rather than a curated food experience, and gives an honest sense of the city's diversity that the historic centre alone does not.

It connects the destination's food identity to place, season and everyday shopping rather than restaurant menus alone.

Wendelse tip: Go on a market day and expect a working local crowd rather than a tourist-facing stall setup.

Transvaal neighbourhood, a short tram ride from the centre.

Binnenhof and Hofvijver

Start outside.

The Binnenhof has accumulated roughly eight centuries of political use and architectural change. The Ridderzaal preserves the medieval court at its heart, but the complex around it continued adapting as occupants and institutions changed.

The Hofvijver gives you the distance needed to see that accumulation. From across the water, the complex doesn't read as one symmetrical palace. Roofs, towers and façades of different periods sit together because government kept needing more space and different kinds of space. The current renovation is simply the latest chapter in that pattern.

Look for: How difficult it is to identify one dominant façade. The complex grew rather than arriving fully formed.

Peace Palace

The Peace Palace is almost the opposite architectural proposition.

Instead of centuries of accumulation, it began with an international competition for a new institution. French architect Louis Cordonnier's winning design was subsequently simplified, producing a neo-Renaissance palace whose historic architectural language housed an explicitly modern international project.

That contradiction is worth enjoying. The building looks backwards stylistically while representing institutions intended to manage relations between modern states. Notice the tower, the asymmetry and the deliberately ceremonial approach. This building wanted to look important from the beginning.

The newer government city

Don't search for one skyscraper to stand in for modern The Hague.

Walk around the area between the historic centre and the major government buildings closer to the central-station side and look at the collective change in scale.

The city becomes taller, larger and more infrastructural. Ministries occupy buildings whose relationship with the street is very different from the courtyards and waterside façades of the Binnenhof. The institutions are related. Their architecture no longer needs to look related.

Water gives the buildings enough distance

The Hofvijver is valuable partly because it lets you stand back.

Without that distance, the Binnenhof can dissolve into entrances, construction boundaries, streets and individual façades. Across the water it becomes an accumulated skyline.

Use the same trick elsewhere in The Hague when canals or open spaces give large institutional buildings room to separate themselves from their surroundings.

Historic and modern scale collide quickly

The Hague can change architectural scale within a few streets.

A medieval hall, restrained brick façades, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century institutional architecture and much taller modern buildings can all enter the same view.

Don't try to make them harmonious. The collision tells you something real about a city whose institutions kept expanding.

Eight centuries of government architecture

Start with the Hofvijver rather than trying to force your way into the Binnenhof during renovation.

Look across the water and identify the Ridderzaal roofline within the larger complex. Then move through the surrounding centre towards the newer government quarter and central-station side.

Don't treat this as a route between attractions. Watch what happens to scale. Courtyards and historic façades give way to larger blocks and then to a much more vertical institutional city. The purpose of government architecture has remained surprisingly continuous. Its preferred shape has not.