An Indian in a Dutch town

 

The Dutch have, not surprisingly, a long tradition with chinese and indonesian food. Chinese restaurants you can find everywhere in the world; Indonesia was for centuries a Dutch colony, nowadays something they would like to forget. The food, not surprisingly, in a local Dutch variation is still being loved.

It took some time before the Dutch were ready to experiment with more outlandish food.  In the seventies pizzerias, mexican restaurants, balkan restaurants and bistros in French style started to pop up. Indian food took a bit longer to reach the Dutch, maybe because it was expected that people would confuse it with Indonesian, I am not certain about that. Fact is that it was not until the eighties before Indian restaurants became a normal sight in Dutch towns.

We discovered one in my hometown; it was a bit hidden, not on one of the main squares. The high rent in these areas probably was the reason for that. The restaurant got the name Ali Baba. First I thought it was a shop with a great variety of goods on offer, but peeping through the window taught me differently. Of course we had to check the place, we loved eating outdoors and had quite an amount of possibilities in town. Ali Baba was the newest attraction and we were curious.

The reception by the propietor who also functioned as waiter was very warm. He made a sort of reverence in reaction to almost everything we said. We got the menu, had the choice between three kinds of soups and my partner and I decided both to have a different one. We picked some other things for the main dish, ordered a beer and realised that we now would have to wait a bit. We were a bit afraid that the proprietor also had to function as cook, but that was not the case. He passed our order on through a door at the back and returned to take care of our beer.

"Look at that!", my partner whispered, "He is not having draught beer. The pumps are fake." I had a good look and saw him fiddling behind the counter with two bottles of beer, probably not realising I could see it all in the mirror behind him. After having filled two proper glasses of beer he brought them over, bowed and withdrew behind his counter. After a few minutes he went through the door and came back with two plates with bowls on top of them. The soup!

We both tried both bowls and they contained exactly the same soup. But it was nice and we did enjoy it. The proprietor came over to make this a certainty: "It's great, isn't? Of course it is! I would think so!" After the soup we had to wait for more than an hour; being bored we had more beer and had a bit of a laugh. The man in control came over and explained that the meal took some time because it was made with great care and within a clay oven. I expressed my interest and asked if we could have a look at the thing, we had never seen anything like that. He shook his head and said he was sorry; it was not possible.

Finally the food arrived and it was quite lovely. The man came over a few times to tell us that it was great food, we would certainly agree with him. It will not surprise you that we had more visits to Ali Baba. Everytime the soup would be exactly the same, the beer would come out of bottles and the wait for the main course would be very long. We never cared, always tried not to be in a hurry.              There came the time that we had visitors. The four of us decided to have a meal outdoors before they had to go home again. We considered the possibilities, our guests decided that we would do Indian food. It was their first time to have this. 

When we entered Ali Baba I explained to the proprietor that we had limited time this evening. Our guests had to catch a train at a certain hour. He bowed three times and said that it would be no problem. Even being the only guests, I had my doubts and I was right.

We had all three types of soup and there was still the same lentil soup in every bowl. We had a bit of a laugh about the man fiddling with the bottles of beer again. This time he noticed and told us that he would soon have a contract with Heineken. "Good for him", I thought. After the soup the waiting game began and I told the man that our time was beginning to run out. Again he assured me that the meal would be in time. And it was: we had 10 minutes left for our meal. The four of us gorged some down in record time and I asked for the bill. The proprietor was flabbergasted, we were forgetting our dessert! Again I had to tell him about time. He shook his head in disbelief when we walked out of the door.

After this we never ate in Ali Baba again. Some weeks later I saw the man in front of his window, maybe looking out for possible guests. Behind him there was nobody, no seat was taken.

A week after this I walked into town and passed the building; the window was wallpapered with newspapers and some worker was busy to scrape the name of the window.

Sometimes we have a nice dinner and we make certain that it is good. "It's great, isn't it? I certainly would say so!"

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