Mrs Liem Gien Nio was a good cook and everyone raved about her pastry. And so she opened a pastry shop in Yogyakarta, named after her husband: Oen Tjoen Hok. Her cookies and pastry were to the liking of many and soon she opened a restaurant. Business was flourishing and she opened another Toko Oen in Malang and one in Jakarta, in those days Batavia, and one in Semarang.

Toko Oen in Jakarta and Yogyakarta closed down in the late 1950s. Toko Oen in Malang is still open but under different management. It’s a lovely nostalgic place, with a 1930s atmosphere. It is huge, on one side there are the counters where you can buy Dutch delicacies to take home. Big pillars support the roof and in between are table with comfortable chairs 1930s style. I admired the authentic stained-glass windows, some panes had cracked and others were in tip top condition. A place to relax and contemplate colonial days.

I am sitting in Toko Oen in Semarang. It was renovated recently. In a way I don’t like this because the interior is no longer the 1930s interior. The menu is still the same. I have ordered coffee and eierkoek, a kind of sponge cake, made according to a Dutch recipe, the taste is authentic. On the menu there are Dutch dishes: ‘huzarensalade, uitsmijter, kroketten’. My father was here in the 1930s. I know because he took a photo. The outside is still the same. the awning over the entrance is still there.

Toko Oen. This photo was taken by my father in the 1930s.

This is what Toko Oen looks like these days.

The interior has changed, the menu has not. These days Toko Oen is a place for well-to-do Indonesians. We ordered two pastries and two coffee and paid 16.000 rupiah (about 2 euros).

One of Mrs Liem Gien Nio’s grandchildren opened a ‘Toko Oen’ in The Hague, Holland. I was there the other day, with my father, reminiscing.