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Dutch food vocabulary

Food vocabulary is high-value from day one: you need it for every trip to the supermarkt, market and restaurant. This page groups the essentials by category with articles and plurals, then covers the Dutch meals of the day and the classic dishes worth recognising on a menu.

Fruit (het fruit)

The collective word het fruit is uncountable; a single piece is een stuk fruit. Individual fruits are mostly de-words.

Vegetables (de groente)

The word for vegetables is de groente (often used in the plural groenten). Note that a potato, de aardappel, is treated as its own staple category, not a vegetable.

Meat, fish and dairy

Note the irregular plural eieren (eggs), part of the small -eren group covered in Dutch plurals. Cheese is a Dutch institution — expect words like jonge kaas (young, mild) and oude kaas (aged, sharp) at any counter.

Bread, baking and staples

Drinks (de drankjes)

Order “a beer” in a café and you'll usually get a small glass called een pilsje or just een biertje — the diminutive is standard, not childish. Coffee culture runs deep, and koffie met gebak (coffee with a slice of cake) is a social ritual.

Meals of the day and Dutch eating culture

The Dutch day has three meals, and their timing surprises visitors: the hot meal is in the evening, and lunch is famously simple — often just bread with cheese or sliced meat.

A famously Dutch breakfast is bread topped with hagelslag — chocolate sprinkles eaten by adults without embarrassment. The verb “to eat” is eten and “to drink” is drinken; “tasty” is lekker, a word you will hear constantly and that stretches far beyond food.

Classic Dutch dishes worth recognising

You don't need to cook these, but you should recognise them on a menu or when a Dutch person offers you one.