Mark P.
Yelp
In The Netherlands, on May 4, there is an event called "Dodenherdenking" ("Remembrance of the Dead"). It's a moment to commemorate the Dutch victims of wars since World War II.
On that day, my wife Kathy and I happened to be having dinner in the Jordaan district of Amsterdam. in a small neighborhood restaurant called "De Reiger". It's not a tourist place: it's mostly locals.
Our host at De Reiger, Ralf, came over to us at about 7 pm, and explained the meaning of the event. He told us that his grandfather had been killed during WWII, and told us what to expect that evening:
At 20:00 (8 pm), the restaurant would turn down their music, some folks would go outside, and everyone would be silent for two minutes. He asked us (very politely and apologetically) to please be quiet for those two minutes. When it was over, the nearby church bells would ring and the evening would continue as normal.
We told him we'd be honored to be able to participate, and thanked him for explaining it.
Then we kind of forgot about it. Later I watched him making a pair of identical drinks for a pair of Dutch men sitting at a nearby table. He put Irish Whiskey into a glass, spooned several small spoonfuls of a dark powder into it, stirred it, then brewed a fresh double shot of espresso and poured that into the glass.
Then he got out a large square plastic tub of real whipped cream from his refrigerator, and floated it on top of the coffee mix.
We asked him what it was:
Irish Coffee.
So we asked for one, obviously.
Look at my photo to see what it looked like. You can't see in this shot, but the glass has the words "Irish Coffee" printed on it. The small brown cookie is a "stroopwafel": two thin crispy waffles with a soft gooey layer of caramel in between.
I took a photo of our Irish Coffee at 20:02. We'd had the drink less than two minutes at this point.
Right after Ralf had given us our Irish Coffee, I realized that he'd immediately gone outside, and was standing quietly with a couple folks. He was late for Dodenherdenking because he was laboriously making an Irish Coffee for an anonymous pair of American tourists.
We both had quieted down, and remained silent, along with everybody else. Once the church bells rang, we took the picture, and finally tasted our Irish Coffee.
Simply and sincerely, I've never tasted anything else like it in my life. It was the best drink I've ever had. And I don't like coffee.
Kathy agreed, and she doesn't like whiskey.
So, we owe thanks to Ralf. He and the rest of the staff fed us a wonderful meal, and graciously encouraged us to help them remember their dead. We're sorry it made them a little late.
(It took me until today, May 6th, to realize that the bells we heard were from Westerkerk, a church inaugurated in 1631, where Rembrandt is buried, and whose tallest-in-Amsterdam church tower apparently featured prominently in Anne Frank's Diary. You should look it up.)
