A 25-year-old guy was dared by his friends to show his cock and balls to the girls of the local rowing club while eating at the same junk food chain. The act is not only vulgar and asocial, misogynistic even, but it’s forcing children and others to see something they didn’t ask for, which is why it’s illegal.
Poor bastard, an off duty cop was dining there and hauled him down to the police station, where he was eventually slapped with a 350 euro fine for exhibitionism.
Some smart students from Barendrecht near Rotterdam area have managed to piss off the Golden Arches by starting a delivery service. You can Twitter @MacDeliveryNL or e-mail McDeliveryNL@live.nl and some kid on a scooter will pick up a burger, fries and a shake for you. Nope, no idea what the extra cost is, I imagine it’s cheap. For the expats out there reading this, the Netherlands doesn’t have ‘drive thru’ service the way they do in North America, and we’re used to onlines services that delivery food from over 100 restaurants.
According to Twitter, the students are making headlines in the media this week. The junk food kings are upset at the students using the name ‘Mac’ and ‘Mc’, and I wonder what the rest of this story will be because it seems it just got started. Mac delivery could also get Apple computers upset, who knows. To be continued.
Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 4:29 pm
The two parent companies of three of the best known snack brands in the Netherlands are considering a merger.
Ad van Geloven from Tilburg (Mora) and Royaan (Kwekkeboom, Van Dobben) would form a company with a combined turnover of 246 million euro and almost 1,100 employees. The new company would be led by Ad van Geloven CEO Peter Doodeman (55), whereas Royaan’s CEO Bart Bakker (43) would lead the merger process, Z24 reports.
Whether the merger will become reality is dependent among others on a verdict of the European Commission which will have to see of the new super company will not form an illegal monopoly. I do not think that ought to be a problem, as there will still be ‘lekkers van Beckers’ (Royal Wessanen, 700 million euro turnover, 2,100 employees).
Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 10:58 am
American junk food chain McDonald’s has increased its lead on the other businesses in Misset’s Dutch food services Top 100, De Stentor reports. Second place is taken by the Van der Valk hotel chain. (Circumstances forced me to stay there one night in 2010 and I can confirm that the food is almost of Mickey D’s quality and not in a good way.)
Biggest investor was the Efteling theme park with its 30 million Raveleijn attraction, with further investments in the pipeline.
Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 10:39 am
I saw this on Dutch commercial television, which more often than not features American series and subtitled or dubbed American advertising ‘like you never left the US’.
Translation:
Guy: Hey, you owe me money.
Girl: …
Guy: For the burger.
Voice-over: So very Dutch! Our new (product name), etc.
Guy: Yep, right amount.
Voice-over: It can’t get any more Dutch.
The adjective ‘Hollands’ meaning Dutch has this reference to the olden days when the Netherlands was just North Holland and South Holland. It can be used in a neutral manner, derogatory or positive manner, depending on the context. In this case it denotes comfort food (brown bread and cheese being a classic here), which is positive.
The negative part remains the stereotype that the Dutch are cheap, which is a gross generalisation, but sometimes where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The Dutch are traditionally thrifty and save a lot of money and don’t run rampant with credit cards, not so much cheap. Oh, and all the Dutch television shows with people about to lose their homes due to overspending kill this stereotype, with the Dutch calling their situation ‘an American one’.
‘Going Dutch’ means paying your own way in English, which in American dating land is surely not a given. And of course, anyone who only wants to pay half the bill at a fast food chain while on a date could easily be labelled poor, not cheap.
A croquette (in Dutch ‘kroket’)(more info here) at the Dutch fast food chain FEBO is currently more expensive than a share of Benelux bank Fortis, according to the Amsterdam Stock Exchange of today. At 13:30 CET the Fortis share was a steal at EUR 0,98.
A croquette at FEBO costs EUR 1,20. A ‘vitaaltje’ (vegetarian croquette) is just one euro during all of October.
The Fortis bank recently had to be bailed out by the Dutch government because of the international credit crisis. Since then its share price has been taking a beating, to put it mildly.
I don’t care about the story, it’s the picture that basically cancels out the story for me. The story is about “experiments to increase health with young people,” which sounds fine, but the picture shows a teenager eating ontbijtkoek, which for the foreign crowd is gingerbread for breakfast. And it’s chocked full of sugar and fat. The background shows a vending machine with Balistos, a muesli (granola) based candy bar, with chocolate and tons of sugar. The captions read “Eating healthy in the cantina of the Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap.”
Did the photographer just do their job or is the author of this article stupid, unaware, fat or something else? With this kind of well-intended advice, no wonder Dutch kids are getting fatter. The road to obesity is paved with junk food.
Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 8:56 am
The ‘kroket’ (‘croquet’ of ‘croquette’, yes it’s a French word) actually has royal beginnings, according to top Dutch food critic Johannes van Dam in ‘Het volkomen krokettenboek’ (roughly ‘The comprehensive kroket book’), which will be published this fall. “It is nonsense to say that the kroket is made of meat leftovers,” Van Dam explains. According to his research, the recipe is from 1691 attributed to French chef Francois Massialot who made krokets out of delicacies such as truffles, mushrooms and cream cheese for King Louis XIV.
The two parent companies of three of the best known snack brands in the Netherlands are considering a merger. 
