by Henk Dam
LET ME get right to the point: I love the world of food and beverages. In fact, you can safely call it an obsession. Because it’s not just about putting something tasty in my mouth, I also want to know everything about it. I want to know how something is made. I want to be familiar with the history behind it. I want to understand the cuisines of many different countries, the connection to culture or religion. And I have an international collection of cookbooks that still regularly drives my wife to despair.
And so I know exactly the year when I first ate something unadulteratedly American, a real hamburger. That was in 1971 when McDonald’s opened its first Dutch restaurant in Rotterdam, my hometown at the time. It was also the Vietnam War era, and therefore nothing good could come from America, many of my friends at the time thought. “Really gross, that burger. Don’t do it!”
But yes. I ate one, and I was sold. Countless times I explained to those friends at the time that something like a hamburger, and really all American fast food, could only taste good because that kind of food is made with the premise that everyone is going to like it.
WE ARE now many decades down the road. During those years I lived in America for a period of time, and I became familiar with American cuisine, locally but also back in the Netherlands where fast food and something like the bbq have become a part of my life.
So we here in Holland owe a lot to American cuisine. Conversely, the same is true: coleslaw, donuts, cookies and waffles have an unmistakably Dutch origin.
Once, in my American years, I tried to add a dish to that lineup: pea soup. I made it for neighbor and friend Ray, a former colonel in the U.S. Army. From Holland I had brought split peas, had found the rest here and there, with a Polish kielbasa replacing the smoked sausage.
And? When I asked Ray that after he had consumed his snert, he replied, “Well, Henk, let me put it this way: if you ever think of opening a chain of split pea soup restaurants, don’t. Just don’t. It won’t work here in the USA.”
A few months later, traveling through California, I happened to see a … pea soup restaurant, one from a chain no less, called Andersen. True, this was a chain originally from Denmark, and I had to get a bit used to the many kinds of “toppings” you could choose on your soup, but still: a chain of pea soup restaurants!
Of course, when I got back home, I immediately and triumphantly told Ray about it. He looked at me thoughtfully and said, yes, ok, but so that’s in California. And California is not actually part of the USA…
* Henk Dam was correspondent in London and Washington for the 19 regional member newspapers of what was at the time Holland’s largest news agency GPD, and subsequently its editor-in-chief/director.
