Food@Melaka - Dutch Harbour Cafe

October 8th, 2007

Due to foreign colonization during the age of Malacca Malay Sultanate, Melaka is enriched with trails of western foreign influences; most significantly being the Dutch, Portuguese and English. The invaluable foreign trails left in Melaka, are ranging from the ancient architecture, to traditions and cultures, drooling foods and etc.

Within the bustling heart centre of Old Melaka heritage town, the Dutch Harbour Café (DHC) is found located in the remarkable red-colored shophouses at Jalan Laksamana, diagonally opposite St. Francis Xavier Church. The Dutch Harbour Café is a relatively new addition to the food heaven of Melaka, which began its operation since 1st Aug 2007.

In Melaka, to date, there’s still very few Dutch restaurant. Though The Windmill Station was once (many years back) being themed as a Dutch restaurant, but eventually, its menu is now very much generally westernized without any specific country’s food in theme.

Months back, when I was driving along Jalan Laksamana, the presence of DHC has caught my attention, as it seems to be primarily focus on Dutch-themed foods. Looks interesting to me, and so I visited DHC with my girlfriend for dinner.

Good Dining Environment

DHC has three dining sections - indoor dining area which has the most number of tables, garden dining area which has 4 tables, and riverside dining area along the Melaka River walkway.

View from The Riverside Dining Area

Garden Dining Area

Personally, I prefer the garden dining area, which is accompanied with some greenery. It is a good place for tourists to take a break in a non-crowded environment, sparring some sweet time planning for their itinerary. The riverside dining area is good, only if it’s not a sunny hour.

Foods I Tried

We only 2 persons, not much variety we can try. Furthermore, it was our dinner, and so our priority goes to the main course. However, from the food menu (PDF), I realized that there were not many choices of main course available, except the Italian Style Pizza column. The Light and Crispy Snacks column offers quite a number of Dutch flavors though.

We ordered a BBQ Chicken Pizza (RM22), Cheese Croissant (RM6), Coffee Mocha Cheesecake (RM8), Cassava Fries (RM5), and a cup of Ice Blended Hazelnut Cappuccino (RM7).

Personally, I would recommend DHC to offer at least 2 sizes of pizza - small and regular. Currently, there’s only 1 regular size available, which has 8 slices. Obviously, it’s not suitable for 2-person portion as how we did; simply too much for us.

Sorry but I have to say that, the BBQ Chicken Pizza we ordered didn’t satisfy my taste bud. The pizza was simply too dry in general. Further more, the crust seems to be thicker than the topping, and thus I had a feeling of eating more flours than the main ingredients. DHC got to improve at this. In terms of pizza, the Coconut House is still offering one of the best in Melaka. Well, DHC is a Dutch-themed restaurant, while pizza is an Italian food anyway

This is the Cheese Croissant, not much comment on it, but personally I find the price tag (RM6) of this croissant to be slightly higher than what it should be. The Dome Café offers good croissant at about RM5.

I ordered this slice of cake by pointing at the fridge, and yet it wasn’t labeled. But from the taste, I think it should be a Coffee Mocha Cheesecake. Please correct me if I’m wrong. OK, I agree, this slice of cake was a good one. The texture was fine, and the mousse topping complements it very well. Not to forget, its cheesy taste was just nice.

French fries or potato fries are easily available everywhere; but this is not really true for cassava fries. Cassava is grown for its enlarged starch-filled roots, which contains nearly the maximum theoretical concentration of starch, a major source of carbohydrates. Cassava is also enriched with Calcium and Vitamin C.

So, we ordered the cassava fries It wasn’t oily at all, thumbs up! A very good snack.

Not Enough Variety of Dutch Food

Actually, I learned that Dutch food is not so much known for main course meal like how we use to have Italian or French pasta. However, as far as I know, Dutch foods are better known for their light courses.

However, personally, I find that DHC menu card still have some rooms for improvement on Dutch dishes. For example: stamppot, stroopwafel and pea soup. I’m a soup person, but couldn’t find any soup from DHC menu

I wanted to order the Dutch Apple Pie, but it was sold out. I believe this would be good.

In view of the current menu items, personally I think DHC is better suited for breakfast and light meals, not so much a main course dine-in place yet.

Should Try Hagelslag

I saw hagelslag on the This Week’s Special menu card. Too bad I wasn’t at DHC for breakfast. I should visit DHC some other time for breakfast, and I will definitely aim for bread or pastry with hagelslag topping.

Menu Card should be tagged with Chef’s Choices

Like how other restaurants practice it, DHC should consider tagging their menu card with Chef’s Choice label, or at least indicate some recommended Dutch dishes.

Tax Free

Something worth mentioning is the absence of service tax or government tax on the bill I believe DHC will remain tax-free till GST is officially enforced in Malaysia.

Contact

As mentioned above, DHC is located diagonally opposite the St. Francis Xavier Church. You may visit DHC site for the direction map.

Address: No. 39, Jalan Laksamana, 75100 Melaka.
Phone: +606-283 7606

Feedback from DHC Owner

Azie, the founder and owner of DHC, has sent his feedbacks via email on 11th Oct, as follows:

Thank you very much for your constructive comments. We will work on what you commented. For your information, we are working on our new menu and it will be out soon. We admit that we have only few of Dutch food on the menu because the intial idea was not a Dutch restaurant. The Dutch harbour name comes from the history of Malacca as a Dutch harbour. Since we are receiving very good cooperation from the Dutch Embassy, we are happy to work on Dutch menu. However, since we have limited kitchen space and also kitchen facilities, we just concentrate on simple snack. Pea soup is great but due to our warm weather, it is not practical to serve it. According to Dutch people, they eat the soup to warm them up during winter.So far we have crioquettes, meat balls,hagelslag,Kofee verkeerd, Kwast and Olieballen.

The BBQ chichken is dry I admit and it is what supposed to be. I would suggest you to try Pepperoni and 3-cheese since they are the most favorite in our cafe.

Thank you again for the nice spread and comments.

Good move from DHC on their plan to improve the menu. Hope the revised menu brings more varieties to Melaka food heaven.

GPS Coordinate: N2.19502 E102.24973

Related Previous Posts

• Jonker Street (Jalan Hang Jebat)
• Dutch Square (The Stadthuys)
• Food@Melaka - Chocolate Fondue and Desserts at Sweet Sensations
• The Night before Official Opening of Dataran Pahlawan Megamall
• Queen Victoria’s Fountain

Entry Filed under: Foods

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