Dutch Food

I've been neglecting to talk about food. For those of you who don't know me well, I'm a very picky eater. The list of things I will eat is far shorter than the list of things I won't. My favorite food is pizza, and I'm content to eat nothing else, so this trip had me very nervous about eating another culture's cuisine. My first experiment was airline food. The last time that I ate it was 1988, and through the mid-90s it had a reputation as being particularly awful. So I didn't know what to expect.

It turned out to be very good! I got some sort of pasta in a cheese sauce, a salad, a brownie (which I gave to my neighbor), and a roll. It wasn't great cuisine, but it was about as good as a higher-end microwave dinner. Breakfast was a banana and a really terrible "Egg McMuffin" substitute.



Then, later yesterday, I went exploring in Heemstede. I found a small Italian restaurant, since I'd know what the things on the menu were. WOW, was the food good! I got tortellini Bolognese, and it was the 2nd best Italian food I've ever had, next to Palio's in downtown Ann Arbor.

Today I went for dinner at a more normal Dutch restaurant, Babbels. It was relatively fancy, and decorated much like a somewhat classy American restaurant. Dinner was steak in wine sauce, which was also amazing! Probably some of the best food I've ever had. Green beans were wrapped in bacon, and it came with some sort of deep-fried potato which was delicious! The whole meal was maybe 20 Euros with beer. As for the beer, I asked for the heaviest beer they had, and they gave me a rather light amber lager. Light beer seems to be very big here, and I'm not a fan of it aside from Pilsner Urquel.


It was so good, I even ate the salad!

Tomorrow is Haarlem Organ Day, with concerts on eight of the city's historic organs! Then the day will end with Mozart's Requiem at the opening concert - at the same Bavokerk he himself visited all those years ago!