As the World’s Worst Blogger™ (it’s ok, I’ve even said it before), I feel that it’s my duty to neglect this website 12 months out of the year and then wake it back up again only when I have something interesting to say. Which I know goes against everything that the Internet stands for these days. But here we are, so watch out, 2019! I think that the direction I really want to go in with this site is out of the ordinary coffee reviews. And in addition to, you know, a day job and a graduate degree I’m currently working towards, I suppose there’s a little extra room in my head to become an amateur roast master. It’s a bandwagon I’m happy to jump on!
Recently when I learned that the Extraordinary Sara G. would be working out of the country for over a month in the Netherlands of all places, I knew that I might be able to find something to write about. Because honestly, when you think of the Netherlands, there are two huge things that immediately jump to mind. Yes, obviously I’m talking about espresso and filtered drip coffees. Because that’s what you were thinking of, right? Right!
And as my first vacation of 2018 apart from two long weekends, it was glorious to get a chance to chill out in a few foreign coffee shops and sample what they had to offer. All of these shops were located in Rotterdam, which is the second largest city in the country and surprisingly, the largest port in Europe! And while I did spent a bit of time in Amsterdam and The Hague, I’m sticking with Rotterdam for the interest of this post.
Before flying over, I did a bit of research and found a few shops that were highly rated and after overcoming some initial confusion over what exactly defines a “coffee shop” in the Netherlands, I had four destinations starred on Google Maps (see below). And even though I’m normally the biggest Starbucks advocate you’ll ever meet, I do have a strict “NO STARBUCKS OVERSEAS” policy. I can get Starbucks literally within walking distance of my house and from work, and if I’m experiencing coffee in a new foreign place, I want to be drinking something new.
Downtown Rotterdam and the port. 
Sorry, Starbucks! Not this week!
The first stop was NOC NOC, to the east of our hotel and over one of the canals. They came highly recommended from one of Sara’s coworkers, so I pinned it on the map and set out on a cloudy Friday morning. After about a ten minute walk, there it was practically beckoning to me with a red and black MINI Cooper parked out front. Inside, there was the counter and coffee bar taking up about a quarter of the room and rest was filled with five or six tables with some roasting equipment in the back corner.
I ordered a double espresso which was a roast from the Mantiqueira Mountains of Brazil. The board described it as sweet with a rounded body and milk chocolate but I thought it was a bit light on that last part. Still, it was a good, smooth start to my tour. Afterwards I opted for the El Salvador which was a lighter blend and filtered through a Chemex.
Side note: From what I observed during my brief stay, what we might call “drip coffee” or just plain “coffee” back home is called is called “filtered coffee” in the Netherlands. And when they’re describing or marketing it, there frequently is a picture of the trademark Chemex hourglass carafe.
When the barista brought this to my table, he included a small glass on the side with the El Salvador beans finely ground up. In excellent English he explained it’s so that one can experience the aroma before and after brewing. I liked this one a little better than the espresso (but then again I could just be biased towards the Chemex). At this time I opened up the iPad and resumed Ararat by Christopher Golden, which I was already a few chapters into. If sitting back and enjoying a cup of filtered coffee in a foreign cafe while reading a novel about a newly-discovered ship in a cave 4,000 meters above sea level THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE a cursed Noah’s Ark isn’t a dream day off, then I don’t know what is.
Eventually I packed up and headed to the next stop on my tour: Hopper Cafe. No surprise, this was more of a lunch cafe than a coffee shop but it was still notable on my list and in I went. It had a large main room with a bar and an upstairs balcony with tables. There was a classic people-watching table up against the front window looking out on the street. I ordered a bruschetta sandwich off the specials board and an Americano to go with it. I even had some company outside when my order arrived.
Bookmarking my page in the spooky ark novel, and putting away the iPad, I tried the Americano. It was small and very intense, almost as if they had just filled the cup up with espresso. Not that that was terrible but not quite what I had been expecting either. So a worthy stop but not my favorite of the trip. The sandwich, however, was everything you’d expect from a European cafe and it was delicious (um, once I removed the olives, that is).
Visit number three was to Man Met Bril Koffie the next morning. I had looked them up online ahead of time and Sara scouted it out before I arrived. She and her coworkers liked it a lot, though they advised me that it was more in a working class neighborhood rather than the touristy areas. But whatever! I will gladly walk among the common-folk to keep experiencing the best of Rotterdam. I don’t live in any ivory towers!
Man Met Bril Koffiee had a few large rooms with two, four, and nine-person tables. The decor was a mixture of potted plants with vines, Edison lights in the middle of the tables, and artwork on the walls of various roadways around the world like Monument Valley. Right next to the long table that I was sitting at was a kitchen within the dining room where they took care of the food orders. I expected this to be similar to Hopper Coffee in that by focusing on cafe-like food AND coffee, neither would really stand out. But oh how wrong I was! I ordered a tasting flight of three coffees and avocado toast with a poached egg on top.
Holy smokes! I’ve had avocado toast in the past but evidently it had been ALL wrong and whoever had prepared it was a criminal. This was phenomenal. A few minutes later the coffee flight arrived and as I worked my way down the tray, I realized I’d just found the place which had perfected the formula of cafe and coffee shop that all others should follow.
I started on the right with the Kenia, which had a light body and was definitely the most acidic (which makes sense since it was grown at the highest altitude of the three). The Honduras lost the acidity and replaced it with a a much juicer finish than the first. The third, the El Salvador, was double-washed and had an unmistakable nutty / bourbon taste to it.
All three were fantastic but I leaned towards the Kenia as my favorite. So I got one more cup of that and, you guessed it, spent another hour sitting there reading Ararat. Oh no, there’s a blizzard coming in! Better get off the mountain and away from that creepy sarcophagus, people!
I had one more coffee shop on the list but I knew Man Met Bril was already the winner. I liked it so much that even though it was slightly out of our way, I dragged Sara back there the next day for a different El Salvador and of course avocado toast before our day trip to The Hague. And I bought a bag of whole beans to take home with me which thankfully made it through Customs along with some hard aged goat cheese. But that’s a whole different review for another day.
Last but not least was the most “Starbucks-like” shop of them all: CoffeeCompany. This was a chain which had at least two locations that I saw in downtown Rotterdam alone and WAY more than a few in Amsterdam. Unlike the others where I ordered a drink at the counter and paid at the end, CoffeeCompany has customers pay first at the counter (also more like the chain stores we’re used to in the US).
This location had two floors and I found a spot on a long table with wooden table in the main room with IKEA-like chairs and games like checkers available for customers in the middle. Off to side were smaller tables, stuffed leather chairs and a Christmas tree. Looking to my left, I could see them preparing my coffee using an Aerofilter which I’ll admit is something I didn’t even know existed until that very moment. The device looks and operates vaguely like a French press, except it sits above a ceramic mug, you pour hot water in the top over grounds, and then press a plunger down so that the coffee drips right into the cup. If you think that description is ok but you’d rather watch a cartoon demo and see why every other coffee preparation method in the world was designed by the Antichrist, then here’s your link.
I got a cup of Guji Highland Ethiopia, which was a darker roast with a strong strawberry flavor. Most of the drinks I’d tried so far had subtle flavors but oh no, not the Guji. The bag said that it had notes of “jammy strawberry” but this was almost literally like being smacked in the head with a bag of strawberries. Supposedly there were hints of lime and chocolate in there too and I’m sure there were, but I couldn’t really make those out. The jammy strawberry onslaught covered all.
But hey, don’t read me saying ‘onslaught’ like it’s a bad thing. I’m typically not much for flavored coffee (or milk or sweeteners) but the whole point of this tasting tour was to get out of my comfort zone and try something new. So I slowly sipped my strawberry coffee, every few minutes took a bite of an apple pie bar, and spent another hour, you guessed it, reading my book which was in the process of taking a hard turn towards The Exorcist meets The Thing (in a well-crafted way!) I’m not going to lie, it was a good companion book to zip through as I wandered around Rotterdam.
One might think that that was enough of a tour. That I’d taken my love of coffee to new international heights. Well, ALMOST. I had one more height to reach and that was about 100 meters in the air above the Rotterdam harbor. For our second to last night in the city, Sara took me out for dinner at the Euromast tower and following some of the best hummus of my life and a scallops entrée, I had the Coffee Dream (vanilla ice cream, coffee merengue, and caramel) and a double espresso for dessert. Walking, reading, and caffeinating my days off across Rotterdam was fun and all but a table for two atop the city? Now that’s a vacation.
Correction: A previous version of this post inaccurately stated that Sara’s coworkers referred me to Man Met Bril Koffie when in fact I had looked it up a month before and told HER about it. So the story’s straight now. It’s 2019 and journalistic standards are important, people!