A rare restaurant review.

Umoja, meaning “unity” in Swahili but apparently “slow and rude” in almost any other language, is the name of a restaurant that Boyfriend had passed and noticed a few times on his way to the station, and he wanted to try it and see if it was as good as it looked.
So, when we were invited by Ms O, a friend of Boyfriends’ to spend a night eatin’ and boozin’ in Amsterdam, he decided to prompt this culinary interest and guided us through its doors for the first try-out of this remarkable restaurant.

First, and last, if I have anything to say about it.

Truth be told, this restaurant really does look great. Very stylish, very clean, and very comfortable. This comfort quickly evaporated when we sat down at the table, as the hip-looking chairs had really understood the idea behind looking “design” and were about as comfortable as spending the night on a banister. That said, we had one of the few higher, 4 person tables, the other tables were low, and set up to seat two, and looked more comfortable.

After having sat down for a while, actually quite a long while, we got our first round of drinks. Since there were three of us, we asked if the 4th couvert could be taken away as well, which is only easier, and since I still do not drink anything alcoholic, I asked if my wineglasses could be taken away as well. The reaction to all this was the first time I felt like just leaving, as my question was met as was I a 3-year old sitting at the grown-ups table. For a second I had to check Ms O and Boyfriends face to be sure I had asked if my wineglasses could be taken away, as it was entirely possible I had asked the waiter to take the monster from under my bed, judging from his response.

Things did not quite improve from there on in. Our waitresses consisted of two people, a tallish man (TM) and a short woman (SW). It was tallish man that had already relocated me to the kiddies table by virtue as approach, so I was obviously more kindly disposed to short woman. SW at one point suddenly appeared beside my right arm with enough suddenness to completely freak me out, which is also always a good basis for a friendly relationship.

Anyway, about half an hour after ordering our drinks, we actually got to see them, and the tone was set for the evening. The tone, and the speed. The speed being “slow”.
We opted to go for the “surprise of the chef” 4 course meal, and it lasted for 4 hours. Which was, quite simply, too long.
Not that the food was bad, it was absolutely acceptable food, reasonable quality, and prepared with quite some care. A shame that it did not rise above the standard of a home-cooked meal in terms of quality or inventiveness.
But really, the speed which was garnered for almost everything, or better, the lack thereof, was what truly turned me off this restaurant. It is all nice and well doing a surprise menu, but of the 4 courses plus amuse bouche and bread, only the main course was actually warm, the rest being salads and carpaccios, which need not take more than 15 minutes. The fact that every course had about 40 minutes till the next one was absurd. It started to be a race against the loss of topics of conversation after a while, and in a group that has me and Boyfriend this is not a common occurrence.
At some point the wine that Ms O had ordered smelled and tasted suspiciously of cork. Not a good thing in wine, this taste, and it was sent back. After the customary “while” a new glass was brought, with an insulting little ditty about how he had decided to open a new bottle, just for her. Well, yes, and the fact that the last bottle had been fungussaly spoiled, duckweed.

The absolute coup de grace for this restaurants’ chances of revisiting was the asking for the bill. Well, not the asking, but the delivery. It came about 20 minutes after we asked (reasonable) and we were then left alone for almost half an hour (unacceptable). After a while, boyfriend walked to the back of the restaurant, he was going to pay with his bankcard anyway and the machines to do so are usually around the register.
Boyfriend came back swiftly, had apparently been ordered back to his chair and told to wait until they came by with their little machine. This is obviously just not done, he is there, the machine is there, let the man pay, I say.
But well, back he went, and after about 20 more minutes, he decided to try again.
This time he was again told that he needed to stay in his seat, as they were serving desserts, and off course he understood (no).

At least the little mobile PINthing followed him to the table this time, we paid the absurdly overpriced bill, WITH the cost of the spoiled wine on it as well, and left the restaurant, deciding to never eat there again, and the resolution to be more assertive in restaurants from now on, as I had wanted to leave after the first snubbing and should've.

I hope all who read this decide the same on the restaurants part, and remember that we pay these people to have a good time in their places, and as such can expect a return on our investment.

Stripes at “never again”

Kevin.

Yes, but is it Art?

Last Sunday, Housemate, Boyfriend and I were up and about at the ungodly hour of 3a.m. to participate in a large scaled installation piece in the centre of Amsterdam. The reasonably well-known artist Spencer Tunick had chosen the background of an inner-city parking garage to stage about 1500 people and create his idea about an artful installation.
The word that wasn’t used anywhere in that last little paragraph but that paradoxically was used in our house and almost all conversations and news-items about the installation was “naked”.

And naked we had to be, we three and ALL the other 1500 people participating. This takes some mental adjusting. Nobody in our house has any real issues body-wise, it comes from being well attractive and all that, but still, there is a good difference between not minding if a towel slips in front of the significant other and just stepping out of your clothes in front of not only 1500 strangers but also every cabdriver in town that happens to pass the parking garage. The fact it is to my knowledge the only 24-hour shop in the vicinity only served to make the situation a tad more interesting.

Anyways, in town by three, in the garage by half past three, and the waiting began. First all the people signing in, then the waiting for the photographer and volunteers.
I think it was about 5 in the morning, dawn already breaking across the country, when we finally had a remarkably convoluted explanation of what we were supposed to do. But really, convoluted. I think we had about 25 minutes of explanation for the in total 5 different configurations, and they were not explained in a nice “first we do this, then this, then we go there, and do this” sort of way, but more like a high school kid improvising his show-and-tell bit.
At one point the man actually went “And then for the second part, I am going to select 17 people, and I will give you all slips of paper, and that will tell you what to do for the fourth part, but I might select more than 17, like if I want to have two groups, but then it might be for the second installation, so it could be that these 30 people need me to tell them to wait, and they should, because, well, after the first I need all the men downstairs.” Euh…. Right. Next year, make a plan and get someone who can actually string words together in a cohesive sentence to explain it to the peeps.

After all this less than perfect explanation, we were counted off in groups, more or less pushed towards our locations at the edge of the building, told to find a spot, and to disrobe on command.
And then the nerves obviously start kicking in. I am not really a naked person, by nature. In fact, I think I am, of the three in the house, the least naked as a rule. Housemate has a tendency to dry up after a shower in front of her compute, Boyfriend spends time naked whenever he is in a bedroom. I prefer to be shirtless but boxered, so to speak. But I had signed up for this thing, so naked I had to get.
And I did, and it was surprisingly easy at that. The fact everybody is to conscious of themselves to really pay attention to other people helped, obviously, and the direct and somewhat expected anonymity of being just a little pink blob in a sea of little pink blobs.

Naked and well, we went through the least interesting part of the day, the actual shooting. Well, least interesting, we had to perch on small folding chairs on the edge of a 6 story high car-park, and lean out somewhat across the ledge of the building. It was precarious to say the least, and damn uncomfortable to say somewhat more.
Pictures made, we went back inside, put some clothes on, went to the second location, disrobed and went through the whole positioning again, which basically ended the day for Boyfriend and me.
Housemate was sort of selected to participate in another installation, a tremendously cool one, so we decided to hang around and see if she was “used” by the artist. As it turned out, she wasn’t, but it was still cool to sort of see the inner workings of a creative mind be expressed through the use of other people’s bodies.
After a reasonable breakfast, Housemate went home, Boyfriend and I went to catch a couple of movies, aided by copious amounts of energy drinks to keep us awake. I ended the weekend with a slight red bull addiction, which is thankfully receding already.

So far for the actual events of the situation, now on to the observations.

Was it art? Well, yes and no. Art is totally subjective, and as such can’t really be judged, and there certainly were some very interesting images created by the combination of skin and concrete.
But really, the nudity is somewhat juvenile in my opinion, and it has already been done. Installations like these aren’t shocking or really confrontational anymore, and therefore lose a little bit of their poignancy.
Is this a problem for me? No. Tunick is a revered artist at the moment and the chance to participate in a project like this is not something that should be waved away just because it looks like a student prank gone demon-boil. But the artist’s idea that he’ll be doing this till he is 90 years old to me sounds like a bold claim, after all, being a one joke puppy never really served anybody well since the villagers of the alpine town had decided that they now understood how the elephants were a smart plan.

Nudity, though natural and functional and sometimes even beautiful, really has no place in a parking garage or petrol station. For one thing, grime gets literally everywhere, and is difficult to dislodge.

Nudity, though natural and functional and sometimes even beautiful, is not ALWAYS beautiful. And it is certainly not beautiful when a group of naked men are asked to kneel down and the man in front of you takes a step backwards before he kneels giving the term “brown-nosing” and all too literal feel. I was barely missed, and happily so.

The chance to ogle was off course taken up by almost everybody, some a little more surreptitious then others, but I know for a fact there was one small Asian gentlemen that was constantly about 2 inches away from being decked by Boyfriend, something much appreciated by myself, as I had no glasses on and could not really see that well who was impinging on my honour. I did decide the diminutive lech was after Boyfriend, but he disagrees.

All in all, a good experience, very interesting, and something that just “needs to be done” but not something I’d swiftly do again without knowing what the installation would be well in advance. I have no problem with the nudity, I do have some issues with the lack of organisation.
Anyways, the project is called Dream Amsterdam, and the website lives at http://www.dreamamsterdam.nl The pictures will be displayed on the streets of Amsterdam from the end of June onward.

For now,

Stripes at “yeah my shoes are somewhere in my bag, over there, with the rest of my clothes”

Kevin