our story
It all started with a cozy house party on a Sunday afternoon in the winter of 2008. A fortuitous visit to The Holland Store — one of Toronto’s few Dutch speciality shops — inspired us to cook boerenkool for our friends. Arguably the most traditional of Dutch dishes, we thought this hearty meal of mashed potatoes and stewed kale with smoked sausage and gravy would be a fun introduction to Justin’s culinary heritage for our friends. But to our surprise, not only did they love it, they demanded we do it again!
So we cooked up boerenkool again the following year for an even larger group of friends, and “Holland Day in Canada” soon became an eagerly anticipated annual event. Over the years, we expanded on our Dutch repertoire with bitterballen and kroketten, and those deep-fried snacks went over great as well. That got us thinking, if our friends liked this food, wouldn’t other people? In February 2014, we decided to find out.
For almost a year, every Sunday afternoon we could be found serving up traditional Dutch foods at The Ossington bar for a weekly pop-up we called Borrel — a word used to describe an informal gathering for drinks and snacks.
We started with a small menu of boerenkool, bitterballen and poffertjes, and our 10 months at The Ossington were an eye-opening experience and a crash course introduction to the restaurant industry. After more than two years of expanding our pop-up to venues around town, including The Depanneur, Hitch, The Beer Academy, Hi-Lo, Handlebar and more, we finally had the confidence to take the next big step.
Borrel opened its doors on the first day of November in 2017. Relaxed, cozy and family-friendly, we have done our best to recreate an authentic Dutch brown café aesthetic and experience as much as possible, without it feeling forced or pretentious.
We continue to expand on our menu with Dutch classics, some fun fusion experiments and Indonesian foods, including our popular monthly rijsttafel (a dinner of fried rice served with a variety of Indonesian dishes). We take just as much pride in reuniting customers of Dutch heritage with the foods they know and love as we do with introducing new customers to a cuisine they’ve never tried before.
As it was in the pop-up days, Borrel continues to be just as much a learning experience as a labour of love. But one constant remains: to provide a sense of conviviality and comfort that we feel goes hand-in-hand with the food we serve. Our aim is that Borrel will continue to foster a relaxed and cozy atmosphere — to be a place the Dutch would call gezellig. Proost!