Indonesian food is very popular in the Netherlands. Some travelers even visit The Hague or Amsterdam just to eat authentic Indonesian food.
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00:00Rice table is a typical style of feast served on special occasions in the Netherlands.
00:06Wait, typically Dutch? Isn't it an Indonesian classic?
00:10The rice tafel, which is here in the Netherlands very popular, it's not very common in Indonesia.
00:18In the Netherlands there are almost 400 Indonesian and Indo-Dutch restaurants and tokos.
00:23My name is Helena Smit, my mother is from Indonesia, Palembang, and I run Indo Food Tours here in The Hague.
00:30How did Indonesian cuisine come to enjoy the popularity it has in Dutch culture today?
00:35That's what we went to find out with Helena.
00:40Indonesia was a Dutch colony for nearly 350 years.
00:44In 1945, the huge Southeast Asian country declared its independence, sparking four years of bloody war.
00:51Hundreds of thousands fled to the Netherlands.
00:55The former colonial power's great wealth came in part from the spice trade that originated in present-day Indonesia.
01:05Whichever way you serve it, the rice tafel is part of that colonial legacy.
01:11And lots of different dishes are presented.
01:15The rich colonists, they got all kinds of chefs from all around the islands to come and to make a dish from their own region.
01:25So like you see here in the rice tafel, all the dishes are not from one place in Indonesia, but it's from all kinds of islands in nowadays Indonesia.
01:36The Hague doesn't only have a lot of Indonesian restaurants, but also small shops called tokos.
01:42Now this one is one of my favorites. It has a lot of snacks and sweets and I really like it. Let's go in.
01:56So this is actually the sweet stuff, kue kue.
02:00This one is kue lapis. It's made with tapioca flour and rice flour.
02:06The taste is like Asian vanilla.
02:10This one is koringskron and this one is pekuk.
02:13The taste is cinnamon, nutmeg, well, all kinds of spices.
02:21Other typical Indonesian snacks include deep-fried pastries like risoles, lumpia or pastels.
02:28They're usually filled with chicken or shrimp ragu.
02:32Right now in Indonesia they even have very different flavors, even with mayonnaise, Dutch mayonnaise and with ham, which is really frowned upon here in Holland.
02:44Here we're thinking like, who puts mayonnaise in a risoles?
02:48So it's really fun to see how even in Indonesia they innovate with flavors.
02:55Indonesian influences have also found their way into typical Dutch snack bars, where you can even order fries with peanut sauce.
03:03But how does that appeal to Indonesian tastes?
03:08For me it's more peanut butter, warmed up peanut butter, than it's really like the good, spicy Indonesian peanut sauce.
03:18This place is called Warung Padang Lape and they serve authentic Indonesian food over here.
03:33This is Ibu Lape and she's very famous in the Netherlands.
03:37The owner and the dishes she prepares come from the island of Sumatra in western Indonesia.
03:44The bumbu spice blend, lemongrass, dried meat, beans and cassava leaves are all imported from Indonesia.
03:50The intense flavor too is authentically Indonesian.
03:57We prepare our dishes with more spice than in other restaurants.
04:01On a spice scale of 1 to 10, our food is always between 9 and 10.
04:07So very spicy.
04:09Much hotter than the others.
04:14Bumbu pedas segalanya berbeda.
04:17Guests come here from all over the Netherlands, and even from abroad to eat true Indonesian food.
04:27I come from Sumatra too, and I really miss authentic Sumatran Indonesian cooking.
04:35I come back to The Hague regularly just to eat here, because the food is really authentic.
04:47The dishes served at these restaurants are a testament to the history shared by the Netherlands and Indonesia.