The Café Orang Belanda is a place with conductive environment for social hangouts, or a quick stop to escape the heat when wondering along Jonker or Heeren Street. Inside the cozy café is a definite peace and serenity that soothes the soul upon entering. One of the many joys of discovering food is the anticipation of what’s capable and the risk to what’s not supposed to be. And when tasting supposedly Holland delights, I find this café taking pride in crepe which in contrarily is French origin.
Put aside the confusion, the café is calm and tranquil courtesy of purple tone as well as the implement of a bit of clever black and white portraits.
The array of crepes seems interesting, with a good choice of both sweet and savory sufficient for individual orders or communal eating. The full glory of selection was not within sights for main meals but majority on the menu could fix a quick light meal.
Crepe Suzette (RM 14.50) is the queen of crepes, offering crepe with delicious orange sauce sprinkled and flambé with Grand Mamier. This way, you can taste the light, soft and spongy texture and have the subtle tangy and distilled essence of bitter orange and sugar from the brandy to complement the otherwise boring crepe. The alcohol might not appeal to mass crowd but certainly is charming in its own way.
Savoury champ has got to be the Pannekoek Bacon (RM 16) and I recommend sharing for this one as I personally find the oil from pork strips a little relenting. This dutch pancake with good slices of smoked bacon on it was delicious. The aroma, fragrant, and texture of crepe all mashed into one perfect spread with good contrast of smoky bacon was a memorable one.
Then ironically, the heavier item on the menu is none other than pastas. The Swedish Meatball (RM 18) could use a little more flavour on the macaroni but the meat balls were tasty. Served with cranberry jam, I’d say most people would be more used to the combination of meat balls and jam from Ikea since majority would be very accustomed to it.
Having said that, the texture of pasta was a letdown and I doubt this would get much attention from frequent customer.
One would be overwhelmed with the choices of crepes but the pull would be at the choices of beverages. Customizing some desirable combination of choices, more than half of what’s on the menu was attractive. The best seller is the Coffee Orang Belanda (RM 6.50) and was indeed lovely. A good aroma of coffee with a tinge of cinnamon upon the first sip temporarily freezes time for a few seconds.
Tea substitutes the caffeine for those who don’t drink coffee. Hibiscus Herbal Tea (RM 4) was mellow and slowly carries a faint sourish finishing. It was a refreshing choice to cleanse the palate after anything greasy.
The road where this café is located is really narrow but one would not missed this with such scene stealer of a cow and some lovely grass with decent table and stools right at the façade of the café.
I would still recommend laksa and nasi lemak for international tourists but this is pretty unique for local tourists. It was something out of the ordinary and worthy of a visit whenever craving for crepe. The Cfe Orang Belanda is located at:
32 Tun Tan Cheng Lock (Heeren street), 75200 Melaka
GPS: 2.195126, 102.247003
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OrangBelandaCafe
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[googlemaps https://maps.google.com.my/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=206844800836952614919.0004dbfac2b311775111c&ie=UTF8&ll=26.152955,55.496529&spn=47.915811,93.629566&t=m&iwloc=0004f3d88846b1f62148e&output=embed&w=425&h=350]
yes crepe suzette anytime for me please! 😀
Let me know when you travel south….I’ll take you there.
Did I see bacon? sign me up!
Yup, and it’s pretty decent. And honestly, bacon hardly goes wrong with anything..