A Letter From Amsterdam

By Janet Lindgren

UTRECHTSEDWARSTAFEL

www.utrechtsedwarstafel.com

It was time to celebrate what had been a most glorious sabbatical year in Amsterdam. I suggested we go to Restaurant de Belhamel – lovely, known, near. “It is one of the city’s prettiest spots, quietly situated on the fringe of the Jordaan area and offering splendid views of both [the Brouwersgracht and the Prinsengracht.]” It had also been an important part of the afternoon, two years earlier, when, after years of being indifferent to Amsterdam’s charms, I had fallen in love with the city. I made a reservations, but with reservations. I knew dinner at de Belhamel would be lovely – and that, strangely enough, was the problem. De Belhamel was not going to help me see anything differently – and that had been the great gift of my Amsterdam year.

Instead we chose to bicycle to Utrechtsedwarstafel – unpronounceable, unfamiliar, and half- way across Amsterdam. Utrechtsedewarstafel didn’t offer a new way to think about dining. It insisted, though only at the end of a familiar litany.

Our dishes are made with fresh daily products,

which we find on the market following the seasons.

We use pure and fresh products and serve the menu as a surprise.

The web-site, I learned, would handle the reservations – “Hans and Igor work on a number one top quality product, which takes all of their time and attention. Because answering the telephone will be too much of a distraction, we request you to make your reservations through the Internet.” I dutifully did as I was told – completing a “menu matrix” that linked number of courses and level to price, entering any “restrictions,” and calling before 2:00 p.m. the day we were dining to confirm the reservation.

I spent the first part of the evening trying to understand how Utrechtsedwarstafel worked. There really were only the two of them – Hans Verbeek and Igor Sens – handling a full house of at least twelve tables and close to thirty diners. Hans chooses the wine for each course, explains why he chose it, and tells what he knows about it, which is a lot. Igor prepares each dish, brings it to the table, and explains what he has prepared. They really do pay careful attention to the restrictions. As Hans seated us he confirmed that I did eat fish, despite my vegetarian leanings. They really do believe in surprise. This means that, beyond the necessary attention to the restrictions a diner lists, Hans and Igor make all of the choices. Not a word was said to my companion about what he would be having. We were served the same first course and had the same enthusiastic reaction. But, it was not until a sharp knife and red wine appeared at the table for his main course that I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing my meat-eating companion hadn’t been limited by my restrictions.

At table side Hans explained that their approach is based “on business principles – on commercial principles.” There are economies in staffing. Hans and Igor do everything but wash the dishes. There are economies in purchasing. Little goes to waste when you are purchasing on the basis of reservations. And, free to make what his imagination and the market suggest, Igor can choose ingredients that are high quality and reasonable in price. Then there are the economies of attention. Once Igor’s imagination and the market’s offerings have determined what will be served that evening, Igor can concentrate on the relatively few dishes he has chosen to make. And yet, there is a lot of flexibility. The “restrictions” keep Igor limber in the kitchen. People who walk in unannounced and ask to be fed are welcomed so long as Hans has a table available and Igor still has food. The restaurant doesn’t have a closing time – unless Hans is leaving for Barcelona very early the next morning, and then he says it closes at 12:30 a.m. With Utrechtsedwarstafel closed three days a week and nine weeks a year, Hans can practically live in Barcelona and work in Amsterdam.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how Hans and Igor had figured out that they could reverse the restaurant world as I had known it – moving from asking what a diner wants, however restricted the choices, to asking only what a diner doesn’t want. I never quite managed to pin that moment down. Their admirable English was sometimes thin and my regrettable Dutch a great deal thinner. There was a limit to how thoroughly I could cross-examine them and still be a gracious guest. And, maybe even they don’t know. Perhaps it wasn’t a flash of insight but a slow process during which they slipped over the line without quite noticing at first.

In the kitchen, Igor explained to me that they started with the physical space, which was already equipped as a restaurant. For a time they tried “a long table d’hôte – with people sharing the table and Igor cooking course after course.” “It didn’t work,” Igor said. “People wanted their own table.” Then they tried what was mostly a wine bar, with food on the side. That didn’t satisfy either, probably because it gave Igor too little room to work his magic. And then . . . . when? . . . . they settled into their current arrangement. A couple of years later they built the kitchen around it. The new kitchen is compact, efficient, well-lit and carefully planned to fit Igor cooking alone.

Thus did Utrechtsedwarstafel grow, the first version of the restaurant bearing as little resemblance to the way it is now as the ten year old photo of Hans and Igor on the home page of their web-site bears to the two men who now welcome you. Hans, who holds nine large wine glasses in one hand in the photo, is still incredibly deft when it comes to swirling the wine in the glasses, but he no longer wears a tuxedo. Igor, though he looks very nearly as youthful ten years later, no longer has a suckling pig with a rose in its mouth tucked under his arm!

Well wined and well dined, we bicycled back to the Jordaan, working our way around two streets that were still closed off to accommodate long dining tables around which the street’s residents had gathered. I imagined each participant bringing to the table whatever he or she could make best from the ingredients available. This was surely the case with the friends who cooked farewell dinners for me in the days that followed. Each essentially asked if I had any restrictions and then made something wonderful. So too Hans and Igor.

Janet Lindgren has just returned from a sabatical year in Amsterdam.