Comment by osener
16 hours ago
I really wish this tired cliché would disappear, and I say this as someone who has emigrated from a country renowned for its cuisine.
Dutch supermarkets offer an impressive variety of products, and there’s no shortage of specialty or “ethnic” shops where you can find virtually any ingredient for any type of cooking. Major cities are brimming with restaurants serving world cuisines, and people with diverse dietary restrictions are well catered to, with a plethora of options available. Plus, Indonesian and Surinamese food can be considered "local" by this point (if you ignore the historical complexity of the topic) and are simply delicious.
While it’s true that the availability of cheap street food might not be as prominent, to say the food here is “bland” couldn’t be further from the truth.
you are talking about two different things here: availability vs cuisine.
it's super easy to go to albert heijn and get really tasty ingredients and cook amazing food. it's also super easy to find great restaurants that are not dutch, and get incredible food (shout out to tacolindo, in amsterdam west).
but dutch food is incredibly bland, focuses way too much in things like mashed vegetables with sausage. you can only eat so many stamppot until you are done with it.
even dutch people say that while yes, you can cook literally anything you want (my wife and i cook brazilian food literally every day), natives in general do not do that.
Food in general in the Netherlands is fine. If we're talking about Dutch cuisine, even us Dutch people complain about how terrible it is.
Even the 'foreign' food is adapted to Dutch tastes and considerably toned down. That being said, it's perhaps better than the Dutch cuisine (though more disappointing, because I had expected better from eg the Indian restaurants, whereas I had no great expectations of the Dutch cuisine).
Local produce is fine, too. They export some great fruit and veggies and cheeses to the rest of the world, too.