Gaining weight in Amsterdam

Amsterdam was a very refreshing change from the US West Coast. It really should go under some fancy marketing campaign, because it really doesn't need the headline drugs and red light district to really get any tourists. It's such a chilled city, small enough to walk around, with enough interesting stuff to go and do, and most of all, people seem so blooming happy there!

The Dutch aren't exactly known for their food, but this time I went with some immense foodies. Eugene is probably the most foodie person I know, but Emily and Emma who also came are big foodies too, and Fil claims to be 'quiet foodie', whatever that is. Probably means Eugene and I talk too much about food as it is :)

There were 3 things we definitely wanted to try - first was Indonesian food, which will be in the next post, but also the more fattening Dutch pancakes and Dutch chips. The first time I had Dutch pancakes was when my friend Kaying took me to this tiny pancake place in Amsterdam run by this charming gay guy, who proceeded to stuff us with as much batter as possible. I couldn't find the place again, but I think pancakes are much of a muchness. We went to a place just off Damm, where I had the almost compulsory combination of ham, cheese, and mushroom:

They should rename this 'how much processed food can you fit on a plate' - still good though! Eugene had even more worrying bacon and eggs combo, which was literally half an English breakfast plonked onto a pancake. Look how happy he is!:

It was during this meal that it finally dawned on me what the HP in HP sauce stood for! Go and find your bottle and have a look at the label if you don't. I just wiki'ed it and the entry claims the poor man who invented brown sauce only got paid £150 for the HP brand, whereas Heinz bought the brand for £440M in 2006. Do people actually eat the stuff outside the UK? My preferred accompaniment to brown sauce, by the way, is one of Alan Wellington's steak sandwiches on the Southwark Habitat site, something I haven't eaten for a long time :(

It also dawned on me that as we were looking for Dutch chips, we may have got the Netherlands muddled up with Belgium. We did actually spend half a day looking for fresh waffles to eat before remembering that we were not in Belgium. But we did stumble across some finally just off the main shopping street. The smell and the queue told us it must be good:

Apparently this little shop started off making the sauces for chips, and branched out to also make chips. Even today, you have a choice of over 20 sauces to choose from, from the traditional Dutch mayonnaise to Belgian mayonnaise, curry sauce, chilli sauce, satay sauce etc. etc. But it was the chips that were the star - really really crisp on the outside, to the extent you think they've battered them, and really soft in the middle. We had them smothered in Dutch mayo (very creamy, but not as pungent as Belgian mayo), curry sauce, and another gloopy pink sauce that I can't quite remember. Once again, Eugene is looking very happy:

Thank goodness we walked a lot on this trip! Not that you really see fat people in Amsterdam - must be all that cycling and running over of tourists.

Neurotic fist-sized portions

First, I shall explain the rather silly title for this post. For training, Uncle B sent us all to Los Angeles for a week, and it was my first time in California, or the West Coast in fact. It has always seemed like a very strange part of the world to me, and not one I've been that keen to visit. This may have something to do with the fact that someone from California once told me that because your stomach is about the size of a fist, the volume of food you should aim to eat at meal times should also be about the size of a fist. No wonder people are so skinny there! So off I went to LA fully expecting granola to be everywhere as well as all the fake body parts. Plus I had heard that California had some of the greatest Asian food in the world - after all, the fortune cookie was invented in California :)

But as it turned out, we were stuck with hotel food for most of our meals, and I'm not sure I had the true taste of LA. However, we did see Hulk Hogan in the hotel bar, plus the Orlando Magic basketball team were staying at the hotel, so I guess that is an LA experience in itself.

The hotel actually had what was apparently a restaurant that people from all over LA would drive to go to, and given that the hotel was in Marina del Rey, quite far from downtown, that is quite a big claim. Personally, the name was enough to put me off: it was called Jer-né, pronounced 'journey', potentially the wankiest name I've ever come across.

The food itself wasn't bad - and I wasn't sure how to make sure of the huge portions coupled with the fist-size eating rule. The prawn starter was enormous, each prawn was probably half a fist:

And my main of halibut was also enormous - the first about 2 fists big - they must have some GM halibut on the West Coast! Don't be fooled by how empty the plate looks:

We also jer-néd (see what I did there) out one night to a local restaurant in Venice beach. Again, Joe's Restaurant had a great reputation, there was even a rumour that it had a Michelin star at our table, but again, everything was a bit meh. Starter of mushroom risotto was actually very nice, but way way way too heavy as a starter:

The following photo of beef with mash and parsnip crisps hides the abomination that was the mashed potato. It was watery, and it was hideous. I'm reading 'The Man Who Ate Everything' by Jeffrey Steingarten right now, a great little book of food essays by a man who decided to have some food adventures before becoming a food writer for Vogue. It's hilarious in places, but he also devotes a whole chapter on why you can't make good mashed potato. The chef at Joe's has obviously been taking tips:

I've been pretty mean so far, and I do recognise that the meh food might be to do with eating with large groups with set menus, which never puts restaurants in a good light. So I shall end with a little write up of In And Out, a Californian burger joint that the Californians are very proud of. The thing it's most famous for is they only have about 4 things on the menu (literally 'Hamburger', 'Cheeseburger', 'Double Cheeseburger' and 'Fries'), but the trick is that there are a series of code words that can get you extra stuff, like onions on top ('animal style'), or just meat and cheese without the bun ('flying Dutchman').

And given that all of Uncle B's children are severe geeky types, it's no wonder we really got off on this. Here is a '4 by 4', literally 4 burger patties with 4 slices of cheese:

Actually, the burger I had (single cheeseburger) really wasn't bad, the meat tasting a lot fresher than most fast food chains. Plus you get to play with the root beer machine. Definitely the most fun meal we had in LA.