Food Heaven or Hell

If you thought there was a bit of a ‘foodie’ feel to my last  post about our weekend of trips, you’d be right. With over 2000 places to eat, drink and make-merry in Den Haag, it is very easy to become obsessed with menus.  It would be impossible to work our way through all the available eateries, but in the name of research we will do our best.

In Haarlem we did occasionally come across a café/restaurant we wouldn’t rush back to, but it was never a question of having a bad meal, more of a ‘service’ issue. Here in the Hague it's not a case of   discovering places we wouldn’t eat in again, but finding places that would have us back. There has been a couple of times just recently when we’ve made a very hasty exit.

The first incident was the vegan cheese crisis. It was a rainy weekday evening so we thought we'd try an Italian a five minute walk away. The waiter was very attentive and the food quickly ordered. Pizza for Mr and Mr T; a vegetarian pasta for our daughter.  We hadn’t seen her for a little while and had lots to catch up on, so much so that although we spotted the waiter taking a dish over to a side table, it totally failed to register that he was grating fresh parmesan cheese all over the vegetarian pasta. As he proudly  placed his work of art in front of our daughter.we all cried, cheese!, like some kind of manic photo-shoot. His face dropped - you can almost see him thinking but you’ve just watched me grate cheese all over this dish. No! We hadn’t watched him, we’d been too busy chatting. There was no cheese mentioned on the menu, we pointed out. But all pasta comes with cheese, he replied.It is traditionale, Italiano… Eventually when it became apparent that the food was not going to be eaten he removed the plate and returned with a cheese-less version minutes later. Mr T left a big tip but we couldn't get out of the place quickly enough.

The second incident was the three course set menu for four people which the waiter transposed into the four course menu for three scenario. There is probably no need to say anymore, apart from in our defence, the starter was a sharing platter, so no missing portion noticed there, and we had been told fish was the main course, so when the  smaller than expected dish of seafood pasta arrived, whilst muttering amongst ourselves (in a very British let’s not make a complaint about this way)  that we’d rather hoped for fish with a backbone as opposed to a shell, it was still technically ‘fish.’  It was only when the knives and forks were placed on the table for what we were expecting to be dessert, that the very confused waitress returned to confess that there had been a mistake. No wonder the pasta dish was small. Surely someone must have realised there had been a mistake when the ‘secondi’ course had to be split between four serving dishes as opposed to three? Presumably the same couldn't be done for the three portions of fish (although other people have managed miraculous sharing issues with little more!). No wonder the original waiter had made himself scarce. Anyway, dessert hastily appeared and a negotiation was made on the final bill. Another one we definitely wont be going back to.

Taking pot luck with the chef’s surprise menu is always a risk - but it hasn't all been bad. We've had a couple of extremely tasty experiences when we've felt like the judges on Masterchef. And, all this  fine dining has also made me realise how easy it will be to solve the cooking of the Christmas dinner dilemma. There I was wondering how many carrots I needed to buy to feed eleven, and now I realise the answer is just one. A couple of slices of turkey, carrot shavings, a miniature cauliflower floret each and a sprinkling of peas. That's all everyone really needs. I'll add a couple of dollops of pomme puree, some artistic swipes of turkey 'jus' and a shaving of burnt bacon crisp with a cranberry foam, all topped off with an edible poinsettia leaf. Just perfect.

Doing Some Dutch Stuff

Entertaining visitors means doing some traditional Dutch stuff. It’s what they come for, and we don’t want to disappoint.

For starters,  we ordered some traditional Dutch weather, a sort of grim and tonic, half a day's sunshine followed by three days of dismal, chilly dampness. For the next course, we visited Delft, the town famous for producing the dainty blue and white pottery as synonymous with all things Dutch as tulips, clogs and cheese. So far I had resisted the urge to purchase any traditional Dutch ceramics, having found no place in my home for the Delft tulip vase, an object reminiscent of an upturned cow's udder. However, with the in-laws in tow we decided to head for the Royal Delft Factory, mainly because it was a good excuse to keep out of the cold.

It was our lucky day.  We had turned up on the Royal Delft’s ‘open day’. All entrance fees were waived, and we could wander around the museum and factory floor at our leisure. I was starting to like the blue and white stuff more by the minute; so much in fact that when it came to the ‘seconds’ stall before the main shop, Mr T and I found ourselves browsing amongst the chipped and faulty offerings to see what we could pick up. One tea-light holder, a beer tankard, and two Christmas decorations later, we’d completed our tour.

Back in Den Haag in the afternoon and it was time for some more traditional Dutch stuff, and a bad case of déjà-vu. There are some traditions that need to be quite firmly knocked on the head, and Zwarte Piet is one of them. Yes, it was that time of the year again. Sinterklaas had come to town.

 ‘Surely here in an international, liberal city like Den Haag,’ I said to Mr T, ‘they’ll have done away with Zwarte Piet?’

But no.  There were hundreds of them. Everywhere. I thought the spectacle was bad enough in Haarlem; but here in Den Haag, jolly old Sint arrived in Scheveningen Harbour at lunch time and at five o'clock in the afternoon he was still winding his way from the harbour to the city centre in a mile long motor cavalcade of all-singing-all-dancing Zwarte Pieten. I don’t think the in-laws knew what had hit them.

We needed something sweet to take away the bitter taste. Dessert is always my favourite course. The following day we set out for Kinderdijk,  home to a series of 19 windmills. Kinderdijk is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it’s pretty impressive, even to someone like me, who is of the opinion that if you’ve seen one windmill you’ve seen them all. It was a chilly grey day, yet the sight of those windmills rising out of the mist was quite magical.

And finally, for the cheese course, we headed to Gouda, where unfortunately as it was winter there was not a single piece of cheese on show. 

Oh well, a bit like Black Pete; you have to take the good with the bad.

A Room With A View

After a quiet couple of weeks we decided to head down to Rotterdam for a day out. Rotterdam was completely flattened during the Second World War and during its re-construction it seems that every whacky architect on the planet has had a hand in its re-design.

The Markthal is one huge psychedelic dome, an amazing combination of retail, eating, living and office space in the Rotterdam Blaak district, an area which is already home to an eclectic mix of buildings. Opposite the Markthal are the cube houses – a honeycomb of dwellings designed in the 1970’s by the architect Piet Blom, together with a hexagonal apartment block in the style of a pencil, and the city library, which for anyone who has been to Paris, is reminiscent of the Pompidou centre with its vivid yellow external pipe-work.

Beneath the brightly coloured murals inside the Markthal there are a variety of eateries and food-outlets; you can embark on a culinary journey around the globe, eat your way from China to Mexico, Spain to Turkey. There was even the opportunity to sample the delights of vegan-land.  The student daughter, visiting for the weekend, was very impressed with the chocolates.

Traditional Dutch offerings were also on display – albeit with a twist. My eye was caught by a wedge of blue cheese, and I don’t mean blue as in Stilton, I mean blue as in sky-blue, all over.

‘Its’ lavender pesto,’ the stall-holder replied when I enquired what magic ingredient gave the cheese its unusual colour. Of course. Lavender pesto. I should have guessed.

Below the foodhall there is a large Albert Heijn supermarket (just in case you prefer to buy your cheese  cheese-coloured) together with a car-park. Hugging the outside, apartments. It’s a vast, innovative space.

Despite all the exotic dishes on offer we played boringly safe and lunched on frites before heading out off on a short tram ride to the other side of town, and the Euromast, a 185 m observation tower.

On arrival we were told that unfortunately, the glass elevator to the final 85 m was currently out of bounds. We could only go up to the observation platform at 100 m high. That was fine by me.  At a blustery 100 meters up there’s a restaurant and also a couple of hotel rooms.  The views are fantastic – we could see north to the Hague, and west to the vast Europort, where Mr T very enthusiastically pointed out his oil refinery, and of course, we could also see through the plate glass full height windows straight into the hotel room.

As I watched the maid scattering rose petals on the double bed, presumably in preparation for some unsuspecting guests,  I thought, no, a night at the Euromast is a bit like that bright blue cheese. Not for me.