Our canteen serves a small and seasonal menu that changes as often as our mood and as new ingredients come in. Naiara’s roots in the Spanish Basque Country and the Moluccan Islands bring personal dishes that are both classic and modern to our table. Taking inspiration from around the world and learning closely from teachers such as Buddhist monk Jeong Kwan in Korea, Naiara developed her own style of cooking. Our menu may feature dishes like Korean rice cakes with our twist on Basque pil-pil sauce or pancakes with Houjicha mascarpone, maple caramel, and roasted Japanese buckwheat tea.
Our canteen is a two-floored space, open four days a week. We serve breakfast and lunch, alongside tea, wine, and other curated and homemade drinks.
Mon — Wed, Closed
Thu — Sun, 10 – 17
Walk-ins only
Guests dining on the ground floor of our canteen, as seen from the balcony painted by Thomas Trum
Handcrafted aprons made by Joseph Walia specifically for Oficina, with a fabric that has been dyed in Gifu, Japan with the juice of fermented persimmons
Rhubarb lemonade and a matcha cookie being enjoyed
Various vegetables growing in our kitchen’s garden, located behind our canteen
View of the canteen’s bar when you first enter the space
A bottle of Còsmic Vinyaters’ Vitalitat Petillant being served in one of our wine glasses
Breakfast and sweets are served all day, while lunch service starts at 11:30. The kitchen is open until 16:30. We have a walk-in only policy. If you would like to come by with a group of 6 or more, send us an email in advance to reserve a table.
Our canteen is a public space that feels like an intimate one. With shared tables and a dependably calm atmosphere, our canteen sets the tone for mindful moments. To preserve that ambiance, we ask our guests to refrain from using laptops.
Menu +
Pear Pecan Almond Tart cooling down in the kitchen
Hokkaido Pumpkin Olive Oil Cake with Chocolate on display next to Matcha White Chocolate Cookies
Puck serving a farinata, a savoury chickpea pancake with seasonal toppings and a fried egg
Various covers for the canteen's menu designed by our studio team
Soft Scramble on Brioche Toast with Radicchio and a side of Miso Bagna Cauda
We specialise in vegetarian cuisine but occasionally incorporate fish. Our dishes are crafted with honesty and purity, emphasising the natural flavours of the ingredients without artificial additives. We take pride in using high-quality ingredients sourced from top producers and importers in the Netherlands. You might even taste herbs or vegetables grown in our own garden.
At Oficina, we value taking time, and this ethos is evident in both our food and drink menus. We offer matcha and a variety of loose leaf teas from Japan, China, and Taiwan, as well as wild herbal infusions from France’s Jura region. While tea is our focus, our drink menu also includes a wide selection of natural wines, homemade lemonades, iced teas, horchata, and more.
Tea +
Tea and its preparations set the pace of our space. We devote time to the ritual of steeping and pouring tea, aiming to extract the best possible flavour and aroma from the leaves. Our wide selection spans different terroirs and cultivars from Japan, China, and Taiwan, as well as herbal infusions.
Our kettle-roasted green tea, Kamairicha, being steeped
Some of the teaware that we use in the canteen: a glass pitcher, white tea cup, and ceramic gaiwan
A sparkling matcha being made at the bar by Puck
Our tea is kept in canisters on the shelves of our canteen, above where teas are steeped and poured for guests
From Japan, we serve steamed green teas like Sencha Asanoka and Gyokuro Saemidori, along with roasted teas like Hojicha and Kamairicha. We especially take pride in our ceremonial grade matcha from Uji in the Kyoto Prefecture of Japan. Matcha, with its sweet vegetal aromas and intensely profound umami taste, is our most cherished tea and has become a vital element in our repertoire.
We also offer a lightly roasted Taiwanese milky oolong tea, made of the Jin Xuan cultivar grown on the Alishan High Mountain, which we had the pleasure of acquiring directly from tea farmers during a visit to Taiwan in the late spring of 2023.
Additionally, we offer caffeine-free infusions made with Soba Cha, roasted Japanese buckwheat from Nagano, and wild-foraged herbs from the Jura region in France. To further expand our repertoire, we also serve a unique Pét-Nat Tea from Ama Brewery, crafted using Basque mountain water and lemongrass.
Driven by our deep appreciation for the tea experience, we invite our guests to embrace the moment and savour the delicate flavours that unfold. It’s an opportunity to indulge in the artistry of tea preparation and find tranquillity in the simple pleasure it brings.
Guest Chef Series +
Once in a while, we invite chefs or artisans to cook with us. For these special occasions, we compose exclusive menus and often extend our hours into the evenings. The unique format of these kinds of collaborations gives us the chance to learn from and with those we respect and admire, fostering deeper friendships along the way.
Poster for a dinner event we hosted to celebrate Oficina's second anniversary
Guests gathered at the front of our canteen, waiting for a dinner event to commence
No. 1 Soba Ukou +
September 25, 2021
Kura-san first began to experiment with making soba noodles from various kinds of European buckwheat flour in 2020, after he moved from Tokyo to the Netherlands. He uses, and sometimes mixes, buckwheat from different countries, like Spain and the Netherlands, to create the same noodle texture as when Japanese buckwheat flour is used. Together with Kura-san, we served a one-night dinner all around soba and offered our guests a sake pairing to go with the 5-course menu.
No. 2 Rita Chen +
November 27 & 28, 2021
Rita Chen is a Taiwanese-born, Canadian chef with classic French gastronomic training. Her food is inspired by the childhood memories of her grandmother’s feasts at the family dining table. She came to Oficina, with Maciek Oleksy, for an autumn weekend to make a special brunch with us. From hand rolled pici, to soy braised duck legs, pearl barley porridge, shokupan toast, to honey cake and houjicha parfait, the menu brought Rita’s past prestigious experiences in distinct parts of the world like Taiwan, Paris, Hong Kong, Vancouver and Copenhagen, to Amsterdam.
No. 3 Julius +
April 20, 2022
In the Wedding district of Berlin, Julius changes their menu in tandem with the seasons and celebrates the organic produce of the small farmers and artisans with whom they have established close relationships. We have long admired how the team behind Julius has a strong sensibility and care towards food, wine and coffee. When their team joined us in our kitchen for a night, our overlapping values manifested in an 8-course dinner.
No. 4 Shoji Hara +
December 21, 2022
Shoji Hara, from Julius in Berlin, shifted our canteen’s focus to coffee, instead of tea, for a day. He poured a custom blend that brings together coffee beans from two distinct regions in Africa. One, from Kirinyaga in Kenya, has a complex body and carries a fruity palette. While the other, from Yirgacheffe in Ethiopia, has a softer body with notes of dried fruit and a hint of spice. Shoji roasts these beans himself in a small hand roaster, directly over fire and hand drips each cup to order. To make this occasion more special, we served a potato croquette on milk bread as a lunch special, inspired by Shoji’s love for potatoes.
No. 5 Hector Henderson +
July 4, 2023
Hector Henderson, the head chef of Rochelle Canteen in London, and his dear friend Celeste Kennedy Doig, brought the taste of Trinidad to Amsterdam for a night. We served a summer supper inspired by flavours found on the southern Caribbean island, with dishes like barbecue spatchcocked chickens, langoustines with scotch bonnet butter, fried barra, loads of different sauces, and angostura ice cream with an almond tart. We invited Hector because we were drawn to the purity and honesty of his cooking style at Rochelle Canteen. With Margot and Fergus Henderson as parents, Hector’s love for cooking and eating at a big table with his family started young. Through Rochelle Canteen, he is able to share his long held belief that “there’s nothing better than sitting in a restaurant and reading a menu, picking what you want, and eating with friends and family.” That sentiment is felt from the moment you ring the bell to enter Rochelle Canteen, like you would the house of a friend or family member.