Great conversation
Lotje Deelman was editor-in-chief of ELLE Eten, has been working for Allerhande for almost 15 years and worked behind the scenes on television programmes such as MasterChef, Worsten van Babel On Tour and De Nieuwe Lekkerbek. She ate pig’s trotter with Anthony Bourdain and flirted with Gordon Ramsay in his Aston Martin. Lotje is the (co-)author of more than ten cookbooks and, in her kitchen in the Drenthe countryside, is never too shy to set something on fire. On FavorFlav, Lotje shares what’s on her mind every week.
“What is Drenthe? What is Horecava? What is a column?” asks my Uber driver, who is taking me in his sexy black sedan from the RAI in Amsterdam Zuid to Café Cliché on the Middenweg in Amsterdam Oost. Conversations with Uber drivers always make me think of a police interrogation. “Where do you live? Where do you work? Where did you buy that jacket? It was expensive, right?” I always give frank answers, slightly intimidated, to questions I actually don’t want to answer at all. Just be quiet for a minute, will you? I still have to write a column.
Cyclists are crazy
So, on the way, my Uber driver enthusiastically FaceTimes his ten-month-old niece, who is wildly swinging an empty one-and-a-half-litre Coke bottle around from her high chair, and offers to take me to Drenthe for €100,-, whatever the fuck it is. I say that I’m actually going out for dinner first. He says all cyclists in Amsterdam are crazy. Really crazy, you know. Full stop. But still no column.
The annoying thing about writing a column is that you have to write it again every week. I was going to do it yesterday morning, a little on the late side, but it should have been manageable. On the train. In the quiet carriage. Old Crow Medicine Show in my ears and tapping away. Pizza. Nice subject. Best meals ever. Nice too. Plenty of inspiration.
It’ll be fine
Meppel, Zwolle, Lelystad, Almere, and still no decent paragraph. Never mind. It’ll be fine. Try to keep the pressure low, let it go, stay close to yourself, and that column will just roll out later.
With my son, who to my astonishment and great delight has become a chef (Him, after secondary school: “I never want to go to school again.” Me: “Then you should become a chef.” Him: “Okay.”), I wander around Horecava. We taste fresh yuzu, strange brightly coloured Peruvian tubers called oca and olluco, and lots of responsibly sourced seaweeds. Jonas is most impressed by the fancy Japanese sharkskin grater for fresh horseradish. Good; his birthday is coming up.
Humour on the menu
The menu at Café Cliché is one that would once have caused me great annoyance. Dijenkletser, Bordeelsluiper, Gleuvenglijder… I always find humour on a menu difficult. In this case, perhaps especially difficult, because I’ve just watched the television series Judas and those Mokum jokes suddenly cause a completely different kind of cramp in my stomach too.
So I simply order ‘the tuna’ and ‘the sea bass’, and the staff laugh at my childishness. Fair enough. They know what I don’t know yet: that whatever it’s called when you order it here, it’s all equally so delicious it brings tears to your eyes. From the oysters to the pineapple. Right up there on the best meals ever list. I won’t say anything else about it, as I still have to write a column, but please, go and eat there.
Great conversation
After that, things take a turn for the worse. The train at pitch-dark Muiderpoort leaves right in front of me, I discover too late that the train at Centraal leaves from 11a instead of 11b, at Almere something station everyone is crazy, drunk or stoned, the train to Meppel reeks of beer and vomit, and my column still isn’t finished.
The next morning, I read in my Uber payment confirmation email that the compliment my driver receives most often is ‘Great conversation’. Exactly. Everything you’re looking for is right in front of you.
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