Coffee is big in the Netherlands, its the go to drink. Coffee is big in the USA, again the go to hot cup of wakey wakey. Now needless to say American coffee ain’t much cop, much like the american steak its been saturated with mass production coffee chains. The Dutch on the other hand seem to have distilled the regular working mans cup of hot black into the strong bitter we used to own Manhattan but sold it for a 2 guilders a stroopkoek and a kiss on the cheek, kind of hindsight is a wonderful thing in a cup type of coffee. I don’t particularly dislike dutch coffee in a sweeping generalization, but I had stopped the hunt for a decent cup some time ago and accepted the fact I would have to wait until I was back in the lucky country. For the record the dutch shouldn’t feel to bad about their run of the mill Albert Heinz one euro cup of plop. The British are serving«Flat Whites» which are basically a 5L bucket of milk which once had a coffee bean placed on the lip and gently blown on to ensure there is absolutely no trace beyond the basic idea of a coffee in that bucket. So yesterday a Russian friend of mine, lets just call him Putin for the sake of argument, suggests we visit a new coffee shop(in the Netherlands really you need to refer to this as a café given coffee shops serve the entirely different type of hot drink in so much that its the type you roll, smoke and listen to music /watch muppets in space with friends.) We went along with low/to no expectations. More then pleasantly surprised. The coffee at Lef is absolutely spot on, you are from Australia or New Zealand and used to some of the best cups of? Go to Lef. Want to step outside of the matrix and find out what great coffee can be like? Go to Lef Slice of cake with subtle lemon flavors and rather pleasantly not too sweet? Go to Lef To be fair there are some great cafes opening in Utrecht these days the hipsters have incubated and there are some really top options, The Village, Café Leute, trust me a random man on the internet called Dennis and pop Lef on your list of MUST go to and try. More than that if you are on this side of town its the absolute best coffee in the area.
