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Thirty years ... six days a week ... 1,123,200 eggs. Saratoga is a town with many venerable restaurants, but Little Amsterdam—the coffee shop with "the Dutch touch"—probably holds the record for serving eggs. Three decades. That's a long time to be frying eggs for a man who, when he began at age 27, had never fried one in his life.
In 1974, Antonius—aka "Ton"—van den Hoogen came to Little Amsterdam, a coffee shop owned by his brothers, from his home town of Haarlem in the Netherlands. He brought with him his wife, Lia, and two daughters. He also brought a sense of humor and an easy style that attracts a stream of regulars to his little shop on the corner, decorated with shelves of blue and white delftware. Numerous Dutch-born customers come to hear their native language spoken.
Customers also are attracted to van den Hoogen's famed hash browns, which are served with every egg dish or on the side for $2.95. "Mine are real crispy," he says of the same brand of Idaho shredded potatoes he's served since '76. He spreads them on a grill heated to 425 degrees, some 50 degrees higher than the norm. "I take them off just before I burn them—if I'm lucky," he reveals drolly, flipping them in a neat, square mass onto a plate. His four kinds of omelets are pan-fried—"not in the oven, like other places."
Even his French toast lacks pretension. Rather than the more-than-1-inch-thick slices of bread that laden many dishes these days, van den Hoogen's slices are dinner size. "You get more egg on them," he theorizes, then adds with a grin, "I also get more slices from a loaf." His Dutch French toast is a house specialty. It's made with cinnamon raisin bread, for $6.95.
What? No Dutch babies? No, but van den Hoogen admits with a smile that he does order the puffy pancakes for breakfast on an occasional day off at International Pancake House.
An easy sense of community exists between "Ton" and his business neighbors. It started when he bought the coffee shop from his brothers in 1976, after two years of essentially learning on his own. Left to his own resources, he called upon neighboring restaurant owner Joseph Masek, whose La Mere Michelle was just two doors away at the time. "Mr. Masek helped me with cooking tips," he recalls. The two still help each other. Masek buys produce for van den Hoogen, who in turn works on any refrigeration problems that might arise in Masek's kitchen. "I was a Volkswagen mechanic back home," he notes.
Little Amsterdam is a family affair. On weekdays for the past 12 years, daughter Desiree Vierra, 34, has been waiting tables and serving as hostess. On Sundays, wife Lia helps out. Van den Hoogen credits his longevity in the Big Basin Way location to the fact that he does all of his own cooking and cleanup, while other businesses leasing nearby locations have had to move on because of doubling rents. Reflecting on his 30 years in the area, he observes, "We used to have lots of real estate offices on the street, now there seem to be hairdressers and nail places."
But things pretty much stay the same at Little Amsterdam. Customers still will find a lunch menu with a Dutch (Boeren) cheese sandwich, croquettes—the corn-dog look-alike—for ($6.95) or an uitsmyter sandwich made of ham or roast beef topped with two sunny-side-up eggs ($8.75). "When I don't cook something right, my customers tell me how," he jokes.
Meanwhile, the van den Hoogens remain in the same Blossom Valley home the family bought when they first came to San Jose. "I'm a prisoner of Prop. 13," van den Hoogen laughs.
Little Amsterdam, located at 14490 Big Basin Way in Saratoga, is open Tuesday through Saturday, 7 a.m.2 p.m., and Sunday 8 a.m.1 p.m. For more information, call 408.867.9172.
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Photograph by George Sakkestad