AWC Going Dutch January_February 2019

The Dutch Daily
by Eileen Harloff
A Tale of Two Dams
Under this intriguing headline was a twopage
story that opened up a whole new world
for me—that of sophisticated food and cooking.
It was reported that on an evening at
the end of October 2018, for a ticket costing
$180, some 80 people were served a modern
Dutch menu at the James Beard House in
New York City. This is the site of the James
Beard Foundation, the most prestigious culinary
institute of America, and to be invited to
prepare a meal there is not only a great honor,
but also an opportunity to receive international
recognition. Five Dutch restaurants were
involved—Choux, Vermeer and Kaagman,
and Kortekaas from Amsterdam, and Aloha
and Dertien from Rotterdam (hence the “two
dams”). These restaurants were selected by
010/020, an organization that was set up two
years ago with the aim of highlighting the
“diversity of the large city gastronomy within
and outside the Netherlands.” This entails an
exchange of chefs at local, national and international
levels, and promoting the “activist
chef,” who regards cooking as an art, not just
a job, and chefs as agents of change, who operate
with a social agenda. This means cooking
with natural ingredients, using more vegetables
and biological products, paying cooks
and food personnel decent wages, avoiding
unnecessary waste, and the like.
As for the menu of the Dutch dinner last
October, three creative examples include
sunflower seed cream with apple espuma,
calves brain with oysters, and pig cheeks
with fermented pears. As for me, I’ll stick to
my peanut butter cookies and tuna fish sandwiches—at
least I’ll know how to pronounce
them.
From Restauranteur to
Archaeologist
Among the cultural treasures of the City of
Delft for visitors to see in the coming year
may well be artifacts that restauranteur Jon
Cornelese found in his recently purchased
building located next to the Grote Kerk.
These were discovered when he was checking
for a potential leak in the floor and came
upon a cellar with two parts—one dating
back to the 15th century and the other to the
13th century. Archaeologists were called in to
inventory the site, and their findings were impressive.
There were blue tiles (one of which
featured an elephant, long before elephants
were widely known), clay pipes, a beer tankard
dating back to 1280, and even a human
leg bone. There were also several bricks that
were identified as coming from the 13th and
14th centuries and had probably been part of
Credit: Fred Leeflang
Credit: Museum Mondial
Miniatures at Their Minimalist
They were created in the Soviet era. They
require a microscope to see and recognize
them. They are few in number. They are
unique and truly spectacular. They are 14
of the many miniatures created by Mykola
Syadristy, a well-known artist in his home
country of the Ukraine. They are on display
in Museum Mondial in Volendam, which
was created especially for this purpose after
a visit that Mural Bilan made to an exhibition
of Syadristy’s work in Turkey. What
he saw astonished and impressed him, and
he enthusiastically told his neighbor in the
Netherlands, Marc van Hartog, who was
then Director of the Stedelijk Museum in
Zwolle. He too was impressed, and an exhibition
was arranged in his museum. In the
meantime, Bilan and van Hartog envisioned
a museum dedicated to just the works of
Syadristy, who agreed to the plan if he himself
could select its location. The three men
visited many sites and finally, in the small
town of Volendam, the artist chose a site on
items on display are portraits of Rembrandt
and Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space,
a bug on a foot and a 1.8 millimeter beautifully
detailed windmill. The materials used
by the artist are pliable gold and fruit pits.
The history of the artist is as fascinating as
his works. Born in 1937 in Ukraine, then a
part of Russia, he was an engineer by career
and a diver for sport. As such, he learned to
slow down his breathing, which stood him
in good stead in his art, whereby a slight
trilling of the hand could lead to the destroying
of a work in progress. The KGB—
the Russian Secret Service—wanted to
recruit him to make miniature devices for
listening in on people’s conversations, but
he refused and as a result he was arrested
and tortured. Fortunately, he survived and
has become a well-known artist. Museum
Mondial is open Tuesday to Sunday, from
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The Last Post Office
In November the only remaining post office
in The Hague was closed. The era of
the local post office, with the head office
next to the Grote Kerk in the center of town,
is over. They have been replaced by neighborhood
postal agencies in stores, tobacconists,
and supermarkets. One of the most
unusual of these locations is situated across
the street from the former central office and
is in the shop Papegaaien Paleis, or Parrot
Palace. Here can be found some 300 parrots
of various colors, attributes and countries
of origin. As the owner of the Palace
says, “nowhere else in the Netherlands can
you buy stamps or send packages among
parrots” and, incidentally, you may even be
prompted to buy one.
Credit: James Beard Foundation
a nearby cloister of that time. These bricks
have now been donated to the Grote Kerk,
whose tower is currently under renovation.
While the archaeological findings have delayed
the opening of the new restaurant by
half a year, they have earned their keep as
a unique addition to the finished building.
Cornelese plans to place a glass floor over
the cellar, which will house the WCs, and
thereby take the customers 800 years back in
time with a simple “wash room visit.”
the harbor, with a beautiful view. And so
Museum Mondial was established.
Syadristy loaned the 14 works to the museum.
Among this collection is a gold replica,
3.85 millimeters small and containing
256 details, of the Santa Maria, the lead
ship that Christopher Columbus sailed to
America. Syadristy commanded that this
work of art should be so placed in the museum
that it looked out over the harbor. Other
Credit: Parrot Palace
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