This turned out to be one of my more eventful trips, leaving London's downtown City airport on Monday morning on the Fokker cityhopper, only to be hauled out of the queue at Schiphol airport for an unpaid speeding ticket issued in Rotterdam in 2002 ! This was my first visit to Holland by air for about 4 years or so and usually inbound passengers from England are cursorily waved through the passport control desks at Schiphol. As luck would have it they were running each passport through the bar code magnetic reader and my name showed up on a list. Embarrassingly escorted to the police counter at the side I was just told to sort it out or appeal to the Centraal Justitieel Incasso Bureau in Leeuwarden, wherever that is.
On Tuesday night I had a dinner at Pinto, a kosher restaurant at 144 Jodenbreestraat ( in the former heart of Jewish Amsterdam ) with a renowned international Sephardi rabbinic authority from London. It has a large floor area with a function room in the basement ( all buildings in Amsterdam are built on water and the foundations have to be regularly maintained ). The owner is Israeli, the same as with the Carmel restaurant and the King Solomon restaurant which I noticed is now 'closed for renovations'. How any kosher meat restaurant stays open and makes money in Amsterdam during the winter months beats me.
I was introduced to the owner who vaguely smelt of cooking oil. My rabbinical dinner companion provided the 'hechsher' or kosher seal of approval that enables a kosher restaurant to trade. We sat opposite each other at a table set for four and as I brushed my fingers against the back of the chair next to me I felt something sticky. This also happened to me once at the Dan Caesarea in Israel when I put my hands under the chair to pull it forward and felt something sticky on the underside of the chair frame.
We had some nice Israeli salads to start with, followed by veal tournedos, having been advised that it was fresh today ( just in case I thought perhaps that it was fresh from last week ). This was fine, albeit a bit on the small side, and was served with an enormous side dish of roast potatoes with onions which no-one could possibly have finished. The food was OK and perfectly adequate, though unexciting, for a kosher meat meal. Service was friendly and attentive.
We briefly talked about swordfish, also known as pez espada or pesce spada, which some Orthodox Jews will eat although it is generally regarded as not kosher. One custom says that as long as a fish has one fin or one scale it is regarded as kosher. I don't know of any one-finned fish, but young swordfish have scales that gradually disappear.
On Monday night I had pasta and grilled sardines at La Pompa, a pasta and tapas bar ( it can't make up its mind ), opposite the Stedelijk Museum at 6 Willemsparkweg, near the art museums. This was washed down with a bottle of De Koninck beer, brewed in Antwerp, a malty type of bitter.
On Wednesday I flew back to London on the Fokker which was delayed yet again due to a technical fault. KLM's Fokker fleet is clearly ageing and prone to malfunctions. Maybe that's why they're called Fokkers.
