bami goreng

The joke in Holland is that, if you want a really authentic meal, you go to a Chinese restaurant and eat off the Indonesian menu.

My favorite Chinese-Indonesian meal is bami goreng. Bami is a thick noodle, and goreng refers to the way it's seasoned. It's served with a thin slice of ham on top, a fried egg on top of that, a generous dollop of pindasaus (peanut sauce) and — if it's bami goreng speciaal — a variety of side dishes. Beer to drink.

Hartstikke lekker, zeg! Eet smakelijk!

That's my dear Dutch friends Albert Boonstra and Janny Kraak in the photo. When I met them in Canada in 1975, they were married. They eventually divorced but remained friends for a while, and Albert made bami and invited Janny to join us when I visited him in Almere, Holland, during the summer of 2000.

If you want to try to make your own bami, you'll have to find mie noodles and seasoning and peanut sauce, and the results ought to turn out looking something like the picture at the bottom left, which is a bami I made in Ohio in 2001.

Sadly, the traditional Chinees/Indonesisch restaurants, which used to be found all over The Netherlands, have fallen out of fashion in recent years. As of this writing in 2023, there are still a few of them left, and they're worth seeking out. For the most part, though, Chinese restaurants in NL serve straightforward Chinese food and Indonesian restaurants serve straightforward Indonesian food, and it's hard to find a good bami goreng speciaal anymore.