They sailed for spices. Now the Dutch crave Indonesian sambal

We investigate Indonesian food in the Netherlands, colonial legacy or entrepreneurial Asians?

If you have travelled to Europe even once, you are bound to encounter a stale joke. It is about how European powers waged wars against indigenous populations in the global South to own and exploit spice plantations, but the spices – except for pepper – never found their way into European cuisine. It is a tongue-in-cheek truism about the blandness of European food and having lived for about a decade in Germany, I can confirm there is truth to it.

But things were looking up for us one autumn day in Rotterdam.

“Karaa ide,” said my Bangalorean friend digging into her smashed fried chicken – Ayam Penyet – smothered with coarsely saucy, deep-red sambal. Her forehead was sweating, her eyes were red and watering with tears of sweet torture from the chillies ground and mashed into the sambal. I watched her as she struggled with her meal and dug into my own Ayam Penyet – we had ordered the same thing.

Sambal oelek, an Indonesian chilli paste | Photo Credit: Wikimedia commons

My friend’s Ayam Penyet at Waroeng EmJay in Rotterdam was the spiciest she ate in all her travels to Europe. With the blandness of European food dulling her senses during our travels, we went in search of Indonesian restaurants in Rotterdam and landed at the one we were sitting in.

Waroeng EmJay didn’t look much from the outside – its lime green signboard needed fixing years ago; it squatted in a less frequented street next to another flashy Asian restaurant that served Vietnamese food. But its tables were brimming with patrons – both European and Asian, its sambal scented airwaves gently clanged with a smattering of Bahasa Indonesia and Dutch. Always a good sign, I might have told my friend.