No tourist traps · no paid placements

Local restaurants in Hilversum, Netherlands

// where locals actually eat — updated September 2026

2 vetted neighbourhood spots in Hilversum, Netherlands — Ukrainian and Thai, found through local word of mouth rather than a marketing budget. Every one of them is below.

1. 1

   Ukrainian

   Natalia's Kitchen

   Natalia Tkachenko arrived from Ukraine as a professional chef and opened this small Eastern European kitchen on the Gijsbrecht in March 2022. What she cooks is home food rather than restaurant food: filled dumplings, slow-cooked stews and the layered honey cake, medovik, that anchors a Ukrainian table, alongside syrniki and pavlova. Dishes are portioned so you can take one as a starter or a main and build a meal at your own pace, which is closer to how these plates are actually eaten at home. Vegetarian and vegan options run through the menu. It sits on a neighbourhood shopping street rather than the centre, and Hilversum's own city guide files it under places with a story.

   Dietary: Vegetarian options are on the menu.

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2. 2

   Thai

   Siam Secret

   Tucked into a residential corner of northern Hilversum, Siam Secret has been quietly cooking Thai food well away from the town's busy centre. The kitchen works from a single culinary tradition rather than a catch-all Asian menu: curries, stir-fries and noodle dishes built on the sour-sweet-salty-hot balance by which Thai cooking is measured. Mains land around eighteen euros, which puts a full dinner here inside everyday territory, and vegetarian and vegan versions are marked on the card. You can eat in the dining room, collect an order on the way home, or have it delivered across town — the same food three ways, from a place that never needed a landmark address to find its regulars.

   Reservations: Book online — the restaurant takes reservations through its website.

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