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.