A Cone of Dutch Nostalgia

I forgot how good potato fries are in the Netherlands.

It is not that the fries in Japan are bad but Dutch patat is still the best I have ever had. Yesterday I was walking through Delft with my mother and we passed a patat zaak. The moment I saw it I felt that familiar pull from the past. At the same time the air was filled with the sweet smell of cinnamon drifting from the shops selling oliebollen and apple beignets. It was one of those simple Dutch winter scenes that stays with you and somehow it made the craving for patat even stronger.

When I first moved to the Netherlands in the nineties I had never tasted Dutch patat. After my first cone it quickly became one of my favourite comforting street foods especially when topped with sweet fatty mayonnaise curry sauce and finely chopped onions. People call it patatje speciaal and the name fits because it really is something special you can only eat here.

Maybe I am a bit nostalgic because this is my first visit back to the Netherlands after more than two years of mostly rice based meals in Japan. Yet yesterday in Delft reminded me how a single scent or a single taste can open the door to an entire chapter of your life.

People often say that fries were invented in Belgium and that is probably true. Yet patat in the Netherlands has its own culture that feels completely different from Belgian frieten. The Dutch made it their own with the patat zaak on every corner, with frietsaus, curry sauce, peanut sauce and all those toppings you hardly see anywhere else. So even if the idea might be Belgian, the way patat is eaten and loved here is something that feels unmistakably Dutch.