Our man in the provinces ate a Frisian meatball
He ate out several times a week, always looking for the tastiest herring, most fun wine, juiciest hamburger or best meat thermometer. But half a year ago, journalist Marcel Langedijk swapped Amsterdam for the Provinces. Is it somewhat bearable there for a lover of fine food and drink? This time: a Frisian meatball on the Afsluitdijk.
In my previous life as an adopted Amsterdammer, I rarely ventured outside the ring road. In fact, I only left the city with great reluctance when I was going to Schiphol or visiting family. Because, or so I thought, why would you leave a city that offers everything a worldly person like me needs? You should know that I had a rather high opinion of myself, as many Amsterdammers do. After all, Amsterdam is the capital, and virtually everything that happens there is at least of national importance, but really of world-class calibre too.
Donny Roelvink’s dentures
So I read on the front pages of various news sites that Amsterdammer Donny Roelvink is saving up for porcelain teeth and that Katja Schuurman and her (adopted) Amsterdammer chef Freek are de-sperately eager to get pregnant. And those are just examples from the past week. I hear you thinking: what in Wodan’s name does this have to do with food? Well, the idea was to make it clear that outside Amsterdam, I visited few other places in the Netherlands. And that I have since come to regret this, now that I live in the Provinces. Because it turns out that outside the ring road, you can also eat well—and in incredibly beautiful places, to boot. I knew that, but I did nothing with it.
Farmers on the A28
And now I do. Because I can. Because our little town is so small, because the much lower housing costs mean we can afford a car here, because in the Provinces you don’t spend seven euros fifty per hour on parking, because there aren’t that many traffic jams in the Provinces yet (unless the Farmers drive their tractors along the A28, but for now I’m assuming that won’t happen every week). It sounds very seventies, and heartburn is lurking, but the fact is that since moving to the Provinces, I’ve been happy to go out with my family. In our defence: we don’t have matching ANWB rain suits, zip-off trousers or those terrifying hiking boots—but I do sense that we’re on a slippery slope.
Wild selfie-stick-wielding Asians
And so our newly acquired enthusiasm for family outings took us all the way to the Afsluitdijk. It turns out that in the middle of that dyke you’ll find not only a monumental statue of Afsluitdijk creator Cornelis Lely and an imposing observation tower by Willem Dudok, but also a small lunchroom that is not coincidentally called Het Monument. If you’re there around eleven, you can avoid the busloads of tourists from Asia roaming around wielding selfie sticks, and calmly enjoy simple yet nourishing dishes such as a 12 o’clock lunch, various fried-egg specials or the Frisian meatball (‘from a real butcher’) in a quaint, sixties-ish establishment. You order it at the buffet, after which you receive a receipt and a rather tatty card featuring a pooping little man, which you can use to access the securely locked toilet, if desired.
Unintentionally old-fashioned
There’s something comical about it, but the people are lovely, the comfort food is perfectly good and the view of the churning water is stunning. It even made me a little melancholic. Not only because I know that my late grandmother sometimes enjoyed a cup of coffee with apple pie there in the seventies, but mainly because this lunchroom wasn’t designed around a concept. Het Monument is unintentionally old-fashioned, and that is a breath of fresh air in these days of concept stores, pop-up concepts and vintage shops.
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