LITTLE FRIES, LITTLE FRIES

There are no Dutch restaurants in the Bay Area. This might be a good thing. While the Dutch have hearty appetites and eat well, their cuisine is idiosyncratic, and might not appeal to many people. Eccentricity on a plate is not commonly accepted; we Americans tend towards plain predictability and the commonplace.
Which can be seen in our Chinese, Japanese, and Thai Restaurants.
To say nothing of the faux inventivity of nouvelle cuisine.
Repetitious, stodgy, but with clean tablecloths.
You get what you ALWAYS order.


Okay, maybe they do that in Holland too. But they're likely to order some plenty strange stuff.


Two examples.


FRIETJE KAPSALON

The literal translation is 'hair parlour fries'. So named, because it was ordered regularly by the patron of a Rotterdam fast-food joint who ran a fancy barber shop.

On the bottom are the fries.
The second layer is grilled meat.
The next layer is a lettuce salad.
The fourth layer is melted cheese.

Add a hefty sploodge of what the Dutch call 'knooflook saus' (garlic mayonnaise), plus some hot sauce, and your meal is done.
Yes, your life is not complete without it.

The grilled meat is shoarma, that most commonly being vertically roasted spiced pork -- pork is the preferred substitute for lamb or goat in the Netherlands -- shaved off in thin strips when just done. It's like many Turkish and Middle-Eastern preparations, but in its Ollando-Levantine incarnation extremely popular for late night crime.
The melted cheese is Gouda.


FRIETJE ZUURVLEES

French fries.
Stewed horse meat.
Brown gravy.

The horse meat is first marinated in vinegar, with cloves, other spices, and sugar (in the south they use 'stroop', that being either apple or beet molasses). It is cut into small cubes, browned, and then stewed for two hours. The gravy is finished by the addition of 'peperkoek', that being a sweet spiced (rye) bread that thickens the sauce. Many people also added peperkoek to the marinade. Horse meat is traditional, and as "paarde-vlees" is rather lean, it benefits from this treatment.


In the case of the frietje kapsalon, the fastidious diner might prefer the components arranged separately on a plate, but salads in a friet kot (fry hutch) or shoarma tent (Mediterranean grill room) are not always interestingly composed or crisp. Plus given that the entire dish is a spur of the moment mistake, eaten either when the weather is freezing or the diner drunk, you can see that it makes sense to just jumble it all together exactly like chili cheese fries and hope for the best.

The frietje zuurvlees is more common in the south-eastern regions of the country, especially close to Belgium. Where the late night crowd also indulges in friet met zult.

And the less said about zult, the better.
[Vreet nooit zult; geen mens weet wat er in zit.]


Dutch food can actually be quite good, of course. The scary things mentioned above are strictly fast-food, and very much like what the rest of the first world often eats but rarely boasts about.
In Sweden they mix pickles (or Bostongurka), mashed potato, bland hot sauce, mayonnaise and boiled sausage, and roll it in a pita bread, in England thick-sliced Spam is often battered, fried, and served cold, and in Canada the national truck-stop dish is poutine -- fries, brown gravy, fresh cheese curd -- which is rather nice.

Of course it was freezing all the times that I was in Canada.
That may have had a lot to do with it.


It's fall weather in San Francisco now. The nights are cold, and in some parts of the city a bitter wind drives people indoors. We need warmth.
Now would be perfect for some deepfried mystery.



NOTES
Frietje: little fry. The 'tje' (chuh) ending is a diminutive, used affectionately.
Mayo is essential; life in Northern Europe without it is utterly grim.
Bostongurka: Finhackad gurka med paprika och kryddor.


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