Café 't Smalle

The slim, dark wood exterior of Café 't Smalle sits right on the edge of the Egelantiersgracht canal. Inside, the stained glass windows catch the afternoon light, illuminating shelves packed with jenever bottles. Pieter Smalle opened a distillery here in seventeen eighty, crafting his own spirits in the back rooms before selling them over the wooden bar. Generations of distillers worked these floorboards until the nineteen seventies, when the space shifted into a quiet neighborhood pub.