Chinese takeaway in a non-gothic town called Ijsselstein

 Chinese takeaways in Holland are put in microwave friendly containers for easy reheating. 

All the different varieties of food are placed to the brim in these containers.

Last Sunday, we were in the town of Ijsselstein in Utrecht. We attended a family concert where hubby’s uncle played the tuba in the wind orchestra. It was for a competition and his group won the first prize in their category. Then hubby’s uncle went out to celebrate with his orchestra friends for dinner while the remaining relatives had Chinese takeaway for dinner.

I shall always remember this particular town for two reasons. Reason number one is that the name of this town rhymes with Frankenstein, the green man-made creature in gothic culture. Not that I was afraid or anything. The town of Ijsselstein was orderly just like other suburbs in the Netherlands. Reason number two was because the Chinese restaurant there served roasted char siew (pork) which was very tasty.

A group of us drove to the Chinese restaurant. The waiting area for takeaway was partitioned from the dining area. Somehow they liked to make it long and narrow. I felt like I was waiting in a long corridor for a visit to the dentist. There was nothing to see in the dim light in front of us except the mahogany, wooden partition an arms length away. Or our shoes for that matter. We started comparing our shoes. There were five of us so we had lots of shoe conversation to walk the talk.

Our order was ready within fifteen minutes; which was quicker than I expected actually. Given the variety of food we ordered, I expected them to take at least half an hour for everything. Reflecting back on Malaysian Chinese restaurants, it always took ages for the first dish to arrive on the table followed by the other dishes coming up like a hurricane, faster than you can eat!

We had our dinner shared by eight people. Among the dishes we had were chap choy (mixed vegetables), babi panggang (roasted pork), bami goreng (fried mee), meehoon goreng (fried meehoon), nasi (white rice) and loempias (Vietnamese spring rolls). The roasted char siew was the tastiest of all.

We felt it was a pity to throw the tiny bits of leftover away, so we tapaoed (took away as opposed to take away) the babi panggang back home to Alkmaar which was an hours drive away. Treading through the fog, cold and slight drizzle back home, we realized that we left poor, old babi panggang in the car. Yet we were too tired to walk back to the car park. Instead we immediately went to bed upon reaching home.

The next day we went back to the car; realizing then that our babi panggang; left overnight in the car; had become a babi beku (frozen pork)!