Today is the day after Johannes's birthday, the day I
traditionally wish him "Happy Birthday"
except, of course, that Johannes died this past September. I remember
birthdays only because they appear in my online calendar, as Johannes's
does on the ninth of October, so if I deleted that entry I would never again think
about Johannes's birthday. It occurred to me to do so, but Talia
corrected me, pointing out that it is a reminder and opportunity to
think about him, dead or alive. Talia is a sensible person: I am keeping
that entry and I am thinking about him. And what I am thinking about
him, or one of the things anyway, is what a terrible loss this is for
the Netherlands.
When, in late 2001, I found myself
living in Amsterdam with disposable income, I quickly learned that money
could buy you good food in the city but, almost without exception, it
couldn't buy you a good meal. Dutch restaurant chefs had a real talent
for taking the excellent produce, meats, and other ingredients available
to me as a private shopper (and so certainly to them as professional
ones) and turning them into garbage. So I cooked for myself, and once or
twice for Johannes, and Talia came and cooked for us both, and the
years went by and the restaurants very slowly started to get better. By
the time we left in 2009 it was no very difficult thing to find a good
meal in Amsterdam and the cause, in my biased but no less correct view,
was Johannes.
Johannes was a food writer first and a
restaurant critic second, as he himself would insist. Those food
writings, and in particular the
Dikke van Dam--illustrated randomly
here--constitute
an important and enduring legacy, but in his lifetime what really
mattered were his restaurant reviews. Under his gimlet eye and slashing
pen Dutch chefs and restaurant owners suffered but they learned. He drove their communal improvement, not the Hotelschool Den Haag, though I respect that institution, not the
biologische movement in
Nederland, though it's done much else praiseworthy, not my years-long near-boycott of the Amsterdam restaurant scene.
Everybody read his reviews and everybody responded to them, going where
the numbers were high, leaving the other restaurants to the miserable
business of feeding tourists or, depending upon location, feeding no one.
Now that he's gone what do you suppose will happen?
I'll tell you one thing for sure, we won't see his like anytime soon.
He was blessed with abnormally acute taste buds, a talent for writing,
and rare probity. He created for himself an encyclopedic (literally)
knowledge of all things food-related. And he worked at his craft almost
without stop for decades on end.
Johannes is gone, who knows where, and his memory won't long serve to goad the Dutch restaurant scene upwards. I've
told you before and remind you here: eat now, for what today you have to dine upon, and who you have to share it with, will not be at table forever.
