Drops of Dutch Love

Licorice is the Hillary Clinton of confections.  You either absolutely love or cannot stand it.  I happen to love it.  So naturally, in the Netherlands, I was in heaven.  Yes, the Dutch are known for beer, cheese, flowers, and fried foods.  They are great, but let’s just face it—you can find the above anywhere (I didn’t say good beer, cheese, flowers, or fried foods, but you get the point!).  But what sets the Netherlands apart is drop, the Dutch version of licorice.

I am not talking about the artificially flavored sweet stuff that come in cardboard boxes or in bags of jelly beans.  The Dutch take licorice to a level that no one can match.  Drop can be hard or soft, sweet or salty, double salted or triple salted.

In Jordaan, my favorite neighborhood in Amsterdam, lies a corner store, Het Oud-Hollandsch Snoepwinkeltje.  Twice I visited this charming little shop—I could never get enough.

Mariska Schaefer greets the hordes of visitors—locals and tourists—with a big smile.  Behind her are stacked columns of glass jars with drop in every shape and flavor imaginable:  licorice is mixed with flavors like bay leaf and mint.  Some are jet black; others have a white coating.  Then there are the other varieties of drop which give the appearance of confetti behind Mariska, who waits patiently as you hem and haw over the flavors in which you are about to indulge.

Mariska vets her candy carefully.  There are large companies, such as Venco, that sell their bags of drop, which you can occasionally find here in the United States.  But Mariska prefers to deal with smaller factories, which provide her with candy that is fresher, tastes better, and gives you something that you will not find in any supermarket.  She’s also a master at weighing the candy—when she reaches into a jar, she can tell by the size of her handful whether she’s got 100 or 200 grams.

There are many charms that greet you when you venture around Amsterdam:  Mariska’s store is one of them.  Don’t leave the city unless you get one of her cone-shaped packages of candy—and you may be surprised how much you’ll like licorice, a candy that has been around for many millennia.