Cafes and restaurants in Bodegraven

Bodegraven has 69 places, of which 55 give opening hours, 80 per cent. Of those, 76 per cent open on a Sunday and 36 per cent work past eleven. Some 28 per cent have no online presence.

That Sunday figure needs explaining, because for shops it is strict here: the by-law allows at most eight trading Sundays a year, and then only between twelve and five. That law, however, is about shops and not about eating places, and it is exactly that difference one sees on the street. The night, moreover, is wider than the Sunday: in the centre one may carry on until four at the weekend, elsewhere until three, midweek until one.

Cheese made this village. The farmers’ cheese market began in 1882, but it stopped in 2001, and the cheese museum that opened in 1990 and moved twice afterwards was closed by the municipality in the autumn of 2024. What stayed is the trade itself: the warehouses are still there and cheese is still stored and traded.

One misunderstanding is worth removing. The protected name Gouda Holland applies to the whole of the Netherlands and not to this district in particular; anyone eating cheese here is not eating a locally protected product.

The municipality has been called Bodegraven-Reeuwijk since 2011. Of the 20,141 residents, 20 per cent are over sixty-five.