(Friday, Sept. 25) Holland was a small country, made larger not by extending its borders within Europe, but by pumping out the sea and replacing it with land, and by become a world trading power with far-flung colonies.
The period of colonization is obvious when you look at the multi-cultural nature of Amsterdam. Faces of varying hues of white and brown, dark eyes, and blues eyes looking into your eyes. Our cab driver, or his forebears, probably came from the part of the world once known as the Dutch East Indies. The owner of “Orient”, and Indonesian restaurant where we dined last night clearly did.
Thai restaurants are as common in Marin as Italian ones. We have at least two Indian restaurants in the county. But if there are any Indonesian eateries in the Bay Area, they must be in San Francisco, Berkeley, or elsewhere.
We’d never had Indonesian food before, so we asked the owner, as well as the woman who served us, what to order. They suggested a small “Rice Table” order of several different beef, chicken, and vegetable dishes. The food was brought to the table in small rectangular bowls and placed on a long warming tray between us, along with a type of “coleslaw”, some fried coconut (a condiment) and a big bowl of white rice.
At first the food didn’t seem overly spicy, but as we continued to eat, our tongues and mouths became hotter and hotter. We polished off a large bottle of water and a full bottle of Pinot Blanc (Albert, out tour guide, would later explain that both of these liquids intensify the “heat”, and that sugar “puts out the fire). The food wasn’t quite Indian, and it wasn’t quite Thai, and it wasn’t quite Chinese, but it was quite good and we left with full stomachs and with thoughts of paying another visit to the “Orient” before leaving for London on Tuesday.
