We love the local Chinese restaurant
In every hamlet you’ll find the holy trinity: a café, a snack bar and a Chinese restaurant. The food isn’t local, sustainable or culinary, but we still love the local Chinese restaurant—and for these reasons.
Prawn crackers
Elongated ‘sheets’ of prawn crackers. You only get those at the Chinese restaurant. To be precise: at the Dutch Chinese restaurant, because in China they’ve never heard of them.
Silky-soft meat
The meat is always silky soft. From black bean beef to cashew chicken, they do something to the meat that only Chinese restaurants can. Or can they? With this trick, your meat will be just as tender as at the Chinese restaurant.
Guiltily delicious
Yes, everything at the local Chinese restaurant is dripping with fat and bears no resemblance whatsoever to food in China. But sometimes you simply crave crispy babi pangang in sweet-and-sour sauce and foe yong hai. The local Chinese restaurant is exactly what you need when you have a hangover and are craving something guiltily delicious.
Nasi and bami
The taste of nasi and bami at the Chinese restaurant is impossible to replicate: greasy and completely adapted to Dutch tastes. We love it. Luckily, you can enjoy it for even longer, because at the Chinese restaurant you always have leftovers.
Doggy bag
Because you always have leftovers at the Chinese restaurant, you go home with a bag full of generously filled white containers. Heat them up and before you know it, you’re sitting down to a Chinese feast again.
Sambal
Sambal on the side? The sambal you get as standard is usually not the hottest. Ask for the ‘house sambal’ or ‘hot sambal’ and you’ll get a spicier version. By the way, did you know that the Netherlands is the only country where you get sambal with your Chinese food?
Carp
Almost all Chinese restaurants have an aquarium with carp or, in the more luxurious restaurants, a little footbridge over a carp pond. As a child, you could spend hours watching them (and, when feeling mischievous, scooping coins off the bottom).
Lazy Susan
The ultimate luxury is, of course, a large round table with a rotating tray. If you come with enough people, this dream might just come true. The tray is completely covered with food. Spot something on the other side of the table? No problem—you can simply spin that delicious dish your way. Once again, something you could keep yourself occupied with for hours as a child.
