To eat a meal like this is to live like it’s worth never dying.
*quotation corrected, found the napkin on which I scribbled it.
And how. Diana recalled her father describing such exquisite meals thus, as we chomped our way through five courses over four and a half hours at Restaurant De Kas. They tried to give us a sixth, another round of delightful perenappelstroop-filled muffins, I think because my incessant picture-taking and absurdly detailed question-asking had given them the impression that I was some kind of Canadian food critic. Ha! No, kids, all of 20 people read my blog (and I love every one of you). But seriously, if you’re in Amsterdam and in the neighborhood of Frankendael Park and have a couple hundred euros to drop on the best meal you’ll have all year, go to Restaurant De Kas.
We arrived just at sunset, to discover that the storks on that huge chimney-thing in the park were in fact read, huge birds. We were still buzzing with appreciation of color, composition and emotion that are the requisite take-aways of the Van Gogh Museum.
We were also still giddy with freedom, leftover from our epic escape from Corporate Netherlands, ironically located in the bucolic Dutch countryside. But basically these culminated into bliss: sitting in a gigantic greenhouse lit by Chihuli-like jellyfish lamps and fireplaces was exactly where the cosmos meant us to be at that place and time. There’s a profound contentment that comes with that knowledge. It’s a taste that permeated the olives and crusty, not-to-be-triffled-with bread and the first few glasses of wine.