Dutch Darlings

Dutch Darlings at 1003 Wisconsin Avenue NW is among the more specific culinary concepts in Georgetown’s cafe and bakery landscape: a shop organized around the pastry and bakery traditions of the Netherlands. Dutch food culture, which the American culinary imagination has historically underestimated relative to the French and Italian traditions, has produced a distinctive pastry vocabulary that Dutch Darlings introduces to the Georgetown neighborhood.

The stroopwafel is the most internationally recognized Dutch pastry product: two thin round waffle cookies sandwiched together with a caramel syrup filling that is warm and sticky when the cookie is fresh from the iron. The standard commercial stroopwafel, which is produced at industrial scale and sold in packages across the world, bears the same relationship to a freshly made stroopwafel as a factory croissant does to one from a competent French bakery. The difference is in the temperature and texture of the caramel: fresh and warm from the iron, the stroopwafel is a different product from the room-temperature commercial version. Dutch Darlings makes them fresh, which is the defining distinction.

Poffertjes are the small, fluffy Dutch pancakes that are made in a special pan with shallow round wells, producing bite-sized pancakes with a light, yeasty texture that regular pancakes do not have. Served with butter and powdered sugar in the traditional Dutch preparation, or with syrup and fruit toppings in the more embellished versions, poffertjes are a distinctive element of Dutch street food and cafe culture that Americans encounter most often at Dutch market stalls and at cafes like Dutch Darlings.

The lower Wisconsin Avenue address at 1003 is in the Circulator-accessible waterfront block of Wisconsin, near the canal and the cluster of cafes that have developed at this end of the commercial street. The morning coffee and pastry trade at this address serves the Georgetown waterfront foot traffic as well as the neighborhood residents who use the lower Wisconsin commercial block.

Hours run from 8am most days with the weekend extending Friday and Saturday to 6pm. The Netherlands has produced a food culture that is more interesting than its international reputation suggests. Beyond the cheese (Gouda, Edam, Leyden) and the herring that the Dutch market tradition established, the bakery and pastry tradition includes the stroopwafel, the speculaas spice cookie, the oliebollen (the Dutch doughnut that is a New Year’s tradition), and the apple tarts and cream-filled pastries that Dutch bakeries have refined. Dutch Darlings at 1003 Wisconsin Avenue NW focuses on the most internationally recognizable of these, the stroopwafel, while introducing the poffertjes that Georgetown’s dining public has been less likely to encounter. For the Georgetown customer who wants to eat a food they have never tried before, the poffertjes at Dutch Darlings provide that specific discovery.