Our Man in the Province Is Angry
He ate out several times a week, always searching for the tastiest herring, most fun wine, juiciest hamburger or best meat thermometer. But six months ago, journalist Marcel Langedijk traded Amsterdam for the Province. Is it bearable there for a lover of good food and drink? Not this time.
Is there really absolutely nothing to complain about when it comes to life in the Province? Of course there is. It’s not for nothing that (give or take, right) three-quarters of the population prefers the big cities to the countryside. Because for anyone who wants to be immersed every day in a sea of museums, music venues, restaurants and cafés, theaters, yoga centers, anal-bleaching clinics and cinemas, life in the countryside is a real struggle. There’s little to do, apart from a local village festival. That’s not a problem, because the car is willing and the nearest medium-sized city is never more than half an hour away, but it’s a different feeling from walking out the door and, hey presto, finding yourself in the middle of a buzzing city.
Henny Vrienten agrees
I was talking about it with Henny Vrienten this week. Before you start grumbling: I would never just name drop, and Henny isn’t an old friend of mine—we didn’t play marbles together—but I simply had to interview the fairly legendary frontman of Doe Maar for a print magazine.
As happens with all the interviews I do, there’s some chatting before or after the conversation. I’m not Peter R. de Vries, you know; I’m more about the velvet-glove approach than the hard line. So I ended up talking about the Province with Henny—71 by now, but calling him Mr. Vrienten feels wrong.
A second home
He lives there too, in the Province. Fairly nearby, in fact, in Overijssel, but unlike me, the Doe Maar frontman doesn’t live there permanently; it’s his second home. Henny spends most of his time in his undoubtedly beautiful little place on the Amsterdam canals. We talked about his love of space and quiet, and his passion for gardening. Next spring he wanted more butterfly bushes and a lovely spot where hedgehogs could hibernate. We talked about the evenings he spent in his provincial garden, crackling fire, bottle of good wine, together with the other ageing men of Doe Maar, and the wonderful conversations that followed.
For the whole family
And we talked about how difficult it is to eat well in the Province. Mind you, it’s crawling with casual restaurants and all you can eat buffet misery; you’re surrounded by steakhouses, wok palaces, bad Greek restaurants, and in literally every village there’s a Chinese restaurant called the Great Wall, with at least five hundred dishes that all taste the same. Pancakes, spare ribs and Domino’s: on every street corner. And of course all those restaurants are perfectly suited ‘for the whole family’.
Schnitzel from hell
Super cosy and apparently there’s a market for it, but I never had genuinely tasty food there. Neither did most people, but they put up with it. Because there’s nothing better, I suppose, or because that’s how it’s always been. And that sucks. Because last weekend I ate a schnitzel from hell in an unnamed little town and an unnamed casual restaurant. Against my better judgment, I admit, but the two glasses of bock beer had given me courage and transported me in my mind back to that one schnitzel I once ate in Vienna.
The kind that spills over the plate because of its sheer size. A sprig of parsley and a lemon wedge, nothing else. Heaven. The thing I was served was thick, grey and sinewy, and the supposedly crispy ‘crust’ of breadcrumbs was loose and soggy. Worst of all, however, was the utter lack of flavour in the piece of meat and the accompanying canned mushrooms. As if I were eating a cardboard box.
Pizza from the wood-fired oven
Henny nodded understandingly. Yes, no, there are plenty of fine-dining restaurants in the Province, he said, but you don’t feel like things served on a bed of this or that every night. It was my turn to nod understandingly. Sometimes, Henny said, you feel like oysters; sometimes simple Indonesian food. One time, I cried in a cracking voice, you want an insanely good wood-fired pizza, the next, ramen soup. Sometimes you want Thai, sometimes a burger, then sushi.
Be the fucking best
We fell into each other’s arms crying—though I may have dreamed that—because that simply doesn’t exist in the Province. And it makes no sense. Why isn’t there an entrepreneur who—I’m just throwing this out there—buys a wood-fired oven, puts down fifteen tables and starts making the ten best pizzas in the whole bloody province? Accompanied by a few very good, affordable house wines. Nothing more. Focus on one thing and become the fucking best at it. No messing around with starters, no dame blanche afterwards, no complicated cocktails and no crappy play corner. I’d drive out of my way for it. And half the province would come with me.
P.S. Does anyone know provincial restaurants that actually do things well? I’d be more than grateful for tips. And so would Henny.
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