Do you dare say that you eat everything?

What if you eat everything in this day and age, when everyone seems to be busy cutting food groups from their diets? Our editorial neighbor Adeline from Amayzine.com wrote an article about it.

The waiter kept tugging at his buttoned-up collar; it was making him hot. In his left hand, a long list, with a pen at the ready in his right. Whether we could pay attention for the big check. “I have one gluten-free, an allergy to shellfish, another gluten-free but low-carb, three vegan, two vegetarian, five preferably-no-meat and one lactose-intolerant.” I almost spit my sip of chardonnay right on top of my amuse-bouche, which, I imagine, was free of everything.

If I could have secretly slipped off the chair under the table, I would have. You sit down with a star chef and immediately put him in handcuffs, poor chef. But that was then, and now, now I sometimes almost don’t dare say that I eat everything, have no allergies and am free from intolerance to anything. You should know that Amsterdam is the stronghold of the vegan empire. Nowhere is the ratio of vegan restaurants to residents as favorable as it is here. We get confused by a menu without scribbled lettuce leaves behind your options. You eat burgers at a classified burger joint, just to be safe, because imagine suddenly having to face 180 grams of something-that-once-bellowed on your plate. And we spend hundreds of euros a year making sure our nuts have never come into contact with anything that could. possibly. be. animal-based. And me? I eat meat, eggs and buy nuts without knowing their country of origin. I should be ashamed. I think. Right?!

Actually, you could say I’m an endangered species in this vegan-vegetarian jungle. Rare, even. I foresee a rise of hotspots where you can freely devour everything. Where you don’t look around before spooning anything meat-related into your mouth. Where they arrange gluten, lactose, animal products, but simply everything (imagine that) on one plate. Where the chef stands behind the stove, stoned with happiness. Where hosts and hostesses glide through the restaurant without a notepad.

P.S.: I really am trying, by the way. I recently told my boyfriend that I was happy with my existence as a flexitarian. His response? Whether I could please act normal rapido, he asked, because we’re simply the kind of people who appreciate a burger now and then, as well as a piece of salmon and sometimes just vegetables. Nothing wrong with that; it doesn’t need a name. He’s right.