Mokum

Mokum, the nickname for Amsterdam, is the Yiddish word for “safe haven”. That’s just what Albert Sikkens hoped to create at this cosy all-day eatery. London-raised Sikkens, who has parents from Melbourne and Amsterdam, also wanted to change how Melburnians think about Dutch food.

Dishes are written in Dutch on the menu. Find classic Dutch comfort food like stamppot: smoked sausage and greens on a bed of mashed potato. Other standouts include bitterballen: crisp croquettes with 15-hour slow-braised beef brisket in a creamy roux. Naturally, pancakes come as both a breakfast staple or dessert.

Those familiar with Dutch food will notice other familiar sweets, like extra-salty liquorice and spiced biscuits. Most pastries are from Penny for Pound. But Mokum makes some here, including Dutch apple pie with whipped cream.

There are beers on tap and a prodigious bottle list with lauded names like Rodenbach, Orval, Delirium Tremens and La Trappe. Sikkens’s cardamom liqueur is used in the Espresso Martini, which tastes like a rich, nutty Turkish coffee. Wines span approachable drops by the glass to idiosyncratic inclusions from Sikkens’s collection, with bottles from Australia, Germany, America, India, Greece and Mexico alongside merlot-cabernet sauvignon from Bordeaux. Plus, there’s house-roasted coffee.