Discover Benelux | See & Do | A Fine Time for Food
A M S T E R D A M
The month of May: a fine time for food In a city with hordes of museums, canals and bicycles, it is only fitting that food ranks high on the agenda and this is never truer than in the month of May. Marking Amsterdam’s ode to food is the Food Film Festival, Rolling Kitchens, the Amsterdam Coffee Festival and a whole host of other edible entertainments. TEXT: EMMIE COLLINGE | PRESS PHOTOS
For decades, food has been confined to restaurants and cafes, with outside eating revolving around a slightly wobbly and difficult to light barbeque or a less-thangourmet picnic. But over the last few years, our attitude to dining has undergone something of a facelift. The boundaries between fashion and food are becoming ever more blurred. Honing in on the surge of popularity for street food, fashionable chefs are donning denim and plaid, decking out old VW camper vans or ramshackle trailers, and it has never proved so profitable. Gatherings such as Amsterdam’s Weekend van de Rollende Keukens [Weekend of the Rolling Kitchens] is one such weekend
which – when blessed by good weather – entices thousands of hungry hipsters. Igor Sorko of Mister Kitchen, the company responsible for the mass influx of petrol-guzzlers onto the Westergasfabriek terrain, explains that they’re expecting 15,000 people on each day of the final weekend in May. Hip, driveable eateries offering a mindblowing variety of food is not a sight you’ll see every day but it is certainly one that you’ll treasure.
the country, but now Mister Kitchen are inundated with requests from other rolling kitchens. “Over 300 food trucks register but we can only host a maximum of 130 of them,” he sighs. But 130 different food trucks must mean such a plethora of food, what delight shouldn’t be missed? “All Rolling Kitchens are so different that I can't really mention a highlight. But people have to try our Butch&Dutch sausages and our beautiful rhubarb liqueur Rabarcello.”
“We really didn’t see the popularity coming when we first started out seven years ago as a small open air restaurant on De Westergasfabriek,” recounts Sorko. Back then there were only around 25 food trucks in
Nouveau rough “Amsterdam has always had a tradition of having restaurants in special locations – often [in disused or forgotten] industrial areas,” explains Sorko. Consciously choos-
Issue 5 | May 2014 | 39