Café Wilhelmina - Bitterballen and Vol-Au-Vents
in short…
eating with the locals
from breakfast to dinner
our favourite – shiitake bitterballen with Amsterdam IPA
We could hardly feel more at home in Amsterdam than when we step into Café Wilhelmina on the corner of Eerste Helmersstraat and Tweede Constantijn Huygensstraat.
In the Helmersbuurt neighbourhood in Amsterdam's Oud-West district, you rarely encounter excited tourists.
There are wide streets with large old trees and 19th-century townhouses just north of the beautiful Vondelpark.
Artists and students live here, as do families and expats.
Wilhelmina itself is an unpretentious place with a friendly team that remains calm and composed even when the few seats are in high demand.
Most of them know each other from the neighbourhood anyway and many are regulars.
The changing menu is small but spot on.
Actually, we can have breakfast, lunch, a small snack with an aperitif or a delicious dinner here.
At this point, I would like to briefly confess my preference for a small, fine bite to eat with my evening drink.
Of course, I enjoy good nuts or crispy sea salt crisps, but I really love it when there's something more than that.
Beef kimchi dumplings with a Mai Tai at Aimy in Munich or fried Danish fjord shrimps with a Boulevardier at Popl in Copenhagen set the standard.
At Café Wilhelmina, it's the shiitake mushrooms bitterballen with an IPA from Amsterdam's Oedipus Brewery that immediately become my favourite aperitif.
Anyone who’s never heard of bitterballen should try this Dutch snack as soon as possible.
These crispy fried balls are traditionally filled with veal ragout and served fresh and hot with a bit of mustard for dipping.
Bitterballen were originally intended as a hearty accompaniment to a bitter liqueur – hence the name.
Nowadays, however, they are creatively refined in good restaurants and, as at Wilhelmina, have become a real delicacy.
Of course, the Wilmina kitchen also delivers more elaborate dishes.
The beef tartare is extended with herring and served with eel mayonnaise – a combination that both surprises and delights us.
This is accompanied by delicious bread from the Louf bakery (which, incidentally, also makes the lovely croissants served here for breakfast).
The Wilhelmina also serves a classic dish with endearing old-fashioned charm that, in my opinion, is served far too rarely - queen vol-au-vents.
The ragout fin is served in delicate puff pastry cases with particularly fine trumpet chanterelles.
The pepper ribeye is also perfect and the chips are thin and crispy, so I always end up stealing one from my neighbour's plate.
The cherry ice cream coupe, my favourite dessert during Advent, is cinnamon- and chocolate-flavoured and topped with a flambéed meringue.
"I'm actually already full" is really no excuse here.
