Our Man in the Provinces on Hospitality Brats
He ate out several times a week, always looking for the tastiest herring, most enjoyable wine, juiciest hamburger or best meat thermometer. But a few years ago, writer Marcel Langedijk left Amsterdam for the Provinces. Is it possible for a lover of good food and drink to survive there? Yes, because there are no hospitality brats in the city.
Dining or having lunch in the provinces can be experienced as disillusioning. Especially by a formerly city-dwelling boy like me. That has everything to do with my countless hospitality experiences in Amsterdam. To put it mildly, they are downright terrible – not counting the good ones, because they do exist: the good restaurants and people, and I love them as I love life itself.
Egos as Big as the Canal Belt
But in general, the capital is not known for friendly or, at the very least, polite staff. Anyone who has ever eaten or drunk anything there can attest to that, has at least 34 bad experiences and, when asked, starts sighing and groaning about that one place with those substandard twenty-euro sandwiches, served by foul-smelling students with egos as big as the Canal Belt.
Ah yes, hospitality staff in the capital—books have been written about them by now, and if not, they should be. So there’s little more I can add to the list of familiar complaints. Once again, there are good people, but I too have been insulted, belittled, laughed at and reprimanded by hospitality brats half my age. They had tattoos, difficult hair and clothes from Daily Paper. They had grey eye bags, gym bodies and smelled of the previous night’s beer. They were arrogant, sour, annoying and uninterested.
Comfortable
And with that in mind, dear reader, a hospitality experience in the provinces can be experienced as disillusioning. Or rather: as a warm bath. I’ve lived here for a few years now, but I’m still surprised when young, fresh-faced girls and boys with rosy cheeks address me as ‘sir’ all evening, despite my having said sixteen times that they should call me ‘you’. That they are polite and ask things like ‘Did everything taste to your liking?’ (with a capital letter, yes, a CAPITAL LETTER!) and ‘Were you comfortable this evening?’ I mean: is comfortable even a word in this context? And if so, who still uses it?
I should add, though, that staff here in the provinces generally have an easier time of it than in a city like Amsterdam. The customers there, in the capital, are considerably more difficult. Or as they say there: fucking annoying. An example? I have one, and a recent one at that, because I was there for work last week. The hotel where I had arranged to meet was one of those places with an eclectic mix of minimalism and taxidermy. Very unique, like every hotel in Amsterdam.
Oat Milk, the Barista Edition
At the table next to me sat a young man (skinny jeans, skinny T-shirt, gym arms, tattoos) and a woman (long dress, leopard print, Nikes).
Her: “A cappuccino. With oat milk, but the barista edition. You don’t have that? Fuck. Never mind then. Water. Filtered, though.”
Him: “A cappuccino for me. But with fresh milk. I’m talking really fresh. So not from a carton, but from a cow. You don’t have that? Nice, dickhead, nice. Come on, Vlinder, I can’t deal with this.”
I did what anyone else would have done. I stood up, grabbed my ham-and-cheese-without-ham toastie, smeared it in Vlinder’s face and punched the man in his gym-trained stomach. They left the premises in tears. Well, that’s what I would have liked to do. And it would have been justified. Instead, I drove back to my home in the provinces and collapsed onto my sofa with a glass of Pinot Noir and some local blue cheese. I felt fucking comfortable.
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