Dutch food??? What is Dutch food?

Eric, Eileen, and I have been trying to discover what constitutes Dutch food by looking for a Dutch restaurant. Not frequently, mind you, since restaurant meals here are a little pricier than their American counterparts. We have discovered that just as there is no such thing as a truly American meal at a restaurant (maybe pot roast at a diner...but that isn't a formal restaurant), the Dutch have the same issues.

We know that there are particularly favorite Dutch foods: pancakes, frites (which are popular everywhere), cream filled cakes, sausage filled breads, thin sandwiches, crocquettes, and of course Herring in its many and varied forms. But, most of these are at their best as street food in Amsterdam (we think...have only been there once) or at a fair. It is sort of like believing American cuisine is best described by funnel cakes -- leading you to eat only at county fairs in central Pennsylvania. In fact, most of the restaurants that we have been to have lunch menus that contain the list above, but for dinner, they might be like any nice restaurant in the US or Canada - maybe you can get frite with your dinner -- and maybe they are not from some multi-national food distribution center as a frozen product.

There are ethnic restaurants here: Shoarma, Indonesian, Greek, Italian. Even small towns have a Shoarma/Pizza place and usually an Indonesian place as well (our Indonesian place in Volkel, is actually, more like a Dutch place that serves mild curry on the chicken (kip) and mild dipping sauce for sate on their spare ribs). We can walk to a Greek place from our house -- it is toward the next town over.

So, like America, there may be no official Dutch food, but you are reminded of that by discovering that there is an ethnic place right nearby.