Dutch food - a user's guide part1 - fast food

Globalisation and the supermarkets are joined in battle with traditional food in Holland - and they face strong, tasty resistance. The result is not homogeneity, but delicious diversity. Especially when it comes to fast food.

Yes, Maccas and Burger King are everywhere and global brands dominate the shelves of Albert Hein (Woolies, with an accent). But the fritte stall, the poffertje shop, the olliebollen stand, the hole-in-the-wall dispensing krocket and frikandel, the market fry-up of kibbeling - are all cooking up a storm too.  The queues are long and the customers are happy. Welcome to the wonderland that is Dutch fast food.

I come to praise fast food, not to bury it. It is surely a noble quest to divine the most palatable combinations of sugar, salt and fat. Until now, I thought the Americans had nailed it. You didn't have to like them, but you had to admire them.

Salt and fat, I thought, met their supreme expression in KFC popcorn - small, battered, finger lickin' pieces of chicken, a superb vehicle for the most fat and salt that could possibly exist in a single bite.

And the sugar-fat combo, I thought, was owned by Crispy Kreme, for that exquisitely light, delicate deep-fried concoction that you could eat a dozen of and feel sick, not full.

No longer. Nay, the yanks are new world try-hards compared with the clog-wog's secret recipes, perfected over millennia.

OK, what are the rules of this competition? It must be - delicious, maximize salt, sugar and fat (these, I am sure, are the ingredients of fast food desire), be portable, be finger food, be affordable, be quick.

Enter the winners - the patat fritte met mayonaise, met satesauze, met kerriesauze. And the kibbeling, met mayonaise. And finally, the ollieballen, met all things sweet.

Patat fritte are chips, twice fried, in paper cones, slathered with mayo, satay or curry sauce, perhaps sprinkled with chopped, raw onion. Is it fair to use mayo to boost the already dizzy fat and salt levels of this masterpiece? I say yes.

Kibbeling are bite-sized fish pieces, battered, deep-fried, dusted with curry powder, smothered with mayonaise, served in a paper bag.

Olliebollen are hole-free donuts, dusted, nay suffocated, in icing sugar. Sometimes with raisins, rum, apple, pineapple. In a bag, from a stall. Is it fair to use icing sugar by the barge-load to boost the hyper-glycaemic sugar levels of the naked olliebollen. I say yes.

At the station, at the footy, in the square. Anywhere, anytime that you might need a sugar-salt-fat hit.