Restaurant Claes Claesz

Amsterdam, 
The Netherlands

Restaurant Claes Claesz is in the Jordaan’s maze of narrow streets, elfin old-world houses, houseboat-filled canals, artsy shops and raucous street markets. In the seventeenth century, this was Amsterdam’s working class neighborhood. Today’s Jordaan includes a large measure of artists and intellectuals.

Restaurant Claes Claesz is itself part of the neighborhood’s history. Joining the post WWII rip-it-down-and-it-build-up city planning formula, Amsterdam targeted the Jordaan for "redevelopment." Savvy citizens formed the Diogenesstichtin—stichtin is Dutch for charitable foundation, a word often seen around Amsterdam—to protest the demolition and buy up the historically most important buildings. The building which now houses Restaurant Claes Claesz was one. Digging through the records, the Diogenesstichtin found that its new purchase was built in 1614 by a wealthy cloth merchant, Mr. Claes Claeszoon Anslo. Additionally, Mr. Claes Claesz had established a hofje—housing for those in need—around its inner courtyard. Like many wealthy Amsterdammers of the time, he had wanted to pave his way to heaven with good deeds, so he established this hofje for orphans. Remarkably, money left by Mr. Claes Claesz to support the hofje was discovered in a local bank. The Diogenesstichtin tracked down the Claesz heirs and together they set up a charitable foundation to restore the hofje and operate it as low-cost student housing. Today, the Clases Claeszhofje, it is one Amsterdam’s oldest.

In 1968, Piet Parijs opened Restaurant Claes Claesz in the front of the hofje—the pretty inner courtyard can be seen from the restaurant’s second level. Claes Claesz has two levels within a single room, a typically Dutch floor plan. Wooden tables sport fresh flowers and mini milk cans of salt and pepper. Brick walls are hung with old copper cooking vessels. A white-tiled bar invites one to stop for a draft and the large windows of the lower level look out on the ever-jaunty Jordaan.

Beset as he is by history, Piet naturally serves traditional Dutch food improvising a few modern twists. Piet, a student of Dutch cuisine, explained that during the Golden Age spices and foodstuffs were imported from around the world. Hence, the seventeenth-century Dutch ate extravagant and highly-seasoned food. The Dutch burgers founded a school to teach lower class women to cook and clean. Spices and most of the seasonings were omitted as it was thought it would make things too difficult. This was the beginning of the bland Dutch cooking tradition.

Piet develops the dishes for his restaurant by working with the old recipes. For example, the VOC (Dutch East Indies Trading Company) brought preserved tropical fruits back from Java in the form of chutneys. Piet serves his organically-raised chicken with bacon and his V.O.C. compote—a mélange of fresh tropical fruit and spices—a variation on chutney. His parsnip soup recipe is very old and so good "Bon Appetit" magazine printed the recipe.

Old-fashioned beef stew comes in a traditional eetsmaklijk—an enamelware double boiler with its own little gas stove underneath—just the thing a Dutch grandma would have used to prepare her stew. When the restaurant first opened, Piet had his grandma’s eetsmaklijk on display. Many of his customers remarked, "Oh, we have one of those in the attic. We never use it, you may have it if you want." Which is how Piet came to have a whole collection of eetsmaklijk in which he serves his beef stew.

I started my meal with tasty fishcakes—Piet’s mother’s own recipe. My companions had a peppery green pea soup made with fresh peas, and a spinach salad with a smooth, tart, Dutch blue cheese. Both were excellent.

Arriving by eetsmaklijk, my beef stew had succulent bits of beef stewed with tomatoes, onions and spice. Two kinds of potatoes—fried wedges and mashed—and a baked zucchini and tomato ragout arrived with it. Mushrooms marinated in a vinaigrette, spicy with pepper, were served on crisp watercress—pepper was primary in the V.O.C.-Java trade. Yummy profiteroles, candied ginger crèmes, rich coffee and mellow cognac created a finale worthy of the Golden Age.

The seventeenth-century Dutch not only ate, but also painted their sumptuous food. Piet showed us a book full of color-saturated reproductions and intriguing commentary: The Dutch Table : Gastronomy in the Golden Age of the Netherlands (Painters and Food Series) by Gillian Riley. It’s out of print, but still available secondhand on the Internet.

Restaurant Claes Claesz was sociably quiet the night I was there. However, things rev up a notch or two when the house musician plays. Weekends find everyone singing along to the Dutch, English and French songs that are performed. Piet also organizes theatrical dinners with live music—definitely on the short-list for my next trip to Amsterdam.