find-your-restaurant agony

Two weeks ago I was forced into the role of the Restaurant Finder. In Amsterdam. Sheesh. I haven’t lived in Amsterdam since 1989. Also, we lived at the Weesperplein, which is outside the horseshoe-shaped grachtenring and far away from the stretch of the Singel between the Dam and the central station, where my party was waiting in a hotel for my expert guidance. I should have asked my friend where I had spent the night for help, I should have refused, I, ah well.

If you live in a big city, you will likely pick your restaurants according to one of the following principles: either you say something like “I’ve gone by that new Indian place at the Utrechtsestraat, it actually looks neat, shall we go there and try it?” (we did, and I found a five-inch nail in my curry). Or you say: “I’m too lazy to cook, let’s roll down the stairs and eat Chinese.” Or you are already in the middle of a city stroll when you walk past a promising restaurant; suddenly you feel hungry; you enter. The one thing that probably doesn’t happen too often is that you start walking in order to look for someplace to eat.

lamb, curry, cream; living and cooking in amsterdam

Our kitchen in our third-floor Amsterdam apartment looked out on a wide, flat roof under which the ambulances of the city were parked. The white-blue Chevy Van ambulances would hoot their jolly Dutch warning melody (a 4-6 chord c-a-f-a) into our living room whenever they roared and squeaked out of their cave. This experience belonged to the front of the house. The roof at the back was owned by the cats and usually relatively quiet. Cats have a mind of their own. They would howl at nights, chase the gulls, fall off balconies with astonished faces, but they refused to touch the rat while it was fresh, that had experienced a major roof-climbing mishap.

belgian fries

I almost feared that I mis-tasted on my first visit. Not so, it is true:

The Göteborg based Delirium Café not only has one of the widest beer selections imaginable, but some person in the kitchen also seems to replace the frying fat at reasonable intervals. This is the third Swedish restaurant in sixteen years where I have found high-end deep frying.

As a web-search on “delirium cafe göteborg” will show, some people object to the roomy atmosphere of the place. Others are put off by the fact that Delirium “brags” with 2000 kinds of beer while, in practice, many of these can be sold out. I do not agree. We got all the kinds of beer we fancied (even the spiced “Jacobite” brew of Traquair House), I like their wooden tables and the high ceiling (although the huge vent pipes are a bit out of place), and yes:

I ordered Belgian fries, listed here as “Pommes frites with aioli”. In view of their wide range of fancy and pricey main courses, it might seem unfair to judge the kitchen by the fries. But these fries were absolutely fantastic.