Marco’s ramen menu (Or: いただきます)

Posted on August 2, 2025 by Niki

Last week was Marco’s birthday. He took a few days off to slave away in the kitchen making a ramen dish. Here was the menu he made:

Here is the translation:

Ramen shop

Marco (マルコ)

🍜 Miso Ramen
・Udon ・Chashu (braised pork) ・Ajitama (seasoned egg)

・Gyoza (dumplings)

🍰 Cake with caramel miso sauce

🍶 Drinks: Sake ・Beer ・Mineral water ・Calpis ・Soju

“Itadakimasu” (いただきます) is said before eating, meaning “I humbly receive” or “I gratefully partake”. It’s a way of expressing gratitude for the meal, acknowledging everyone involved in its preparation, from the ingredients to the cooks. 

It was, as expected, delicious!

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Restaurant guardians (Or: Five K Comfort Food)

Posted on July 24, 2025 by Niki

Yesterday, Marco, Roger and I went to see Fantastic Four at Pathé, a large movie chain here in the Netherlands. After that, we went to Five K Comfort Food, a Korean restaurant. I had katsu chicken tenders, Marco had a katsu chicken burger and Roger had garlic chicken wings. It was all very tasty (although we were definitely stuffed after).

After we were done eating and Marco went up to pay, I noticed some Gundam statues throughout the restaurant:

Here’s another one. In the background you can see even more hanging on the wall…

Definitely a colorful and cool end to the evening!

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Off to Amsterdam (Or: Hadestown in Carré)

Posted on July 16, 2025 by Niki

Last week Marco, Roger and I went to Amsterdam to see the play Hadestown at Royal Theatre Carré.

We had front row balcony seats (thanks Roger!).

Here’s a closer look at the stage before the play started:

Here’s the description from Carré’s website:

“Two ancient love stories are woven into one bold and modern retelling: that of the young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone. When Eurydice makes an irreversible choice, Orpheus sets out to save not only her, but the entire world—with a song that brings spring back to life and a stirring dose of hope.”

I thought it was a pretty good musical. It’s not at the top of the list of musicals I’ve seen, but it is always fun to go to the Carré. The musical was also in English. Certain shows had English subtitles for Dutch speakers (if you look at the first photo, you’ll see black boxes to the left and right of the stage where the subtitles show up). And it was definitely a fun night out with the boys!

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Bee bold, write (Or: Designs at P.W. Akkerman)

Posted on July 9, 2025 by Niki

There is a fountain pen store in De Passage, a covered shopping area called P.W. Akkerman. Their latest campaign is “Bee bold. Write.”, complete with eye-catching bee and beehive designs.

I took it looked cute, and it worked well with the yellow color underneath (I can’t remember if it is usually yellow or not. I’ll have to check again the display is removed.)

I personally have not been inside but I know it is a great store. Two of my coworkers were gifted fountain fens when they left the company, and I only heard praise for P.W. Akkerman when they opened the gifts.

Random news article from dutchnews.nl: Beautiful addiction: art meets taxidermy in new Amsterdam museum. The museum is called Art Zo and is about a 20 minute walk from Amsterdam Central Station. Have a look at the website if you will be visiting Amsterdam.

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Colorful graffiti (And: Sizzling temperatures)

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Niki

Last week Marco and I had Friday off so we were exploring Binkhorst, an industrial part of The Hague a bit more to the south of the city centre. I managed to find some graffiti. First, some frogs!

I also found graffiti of a woman’s face. It was quite striking, although my preference goes to the frogs since it was so unexpected.

The woman looks like she could be an evil villain, like Harley Quinn or a younger version of Cruella De Vil.

At some point we had to cross the canal. The best way to do that was over a very steep bridge. Steep because each step was quite narrow, too narrow to fit my (already tiny) feet on without hanging over the edge. Here’s a link to the Google Maps image but you won’t be able to see well how steep each step is. Like most Dutch bridges, it comes with a groove on each side for you to more easily transport your bike across. It did the job, though. We got across. And Marco was a gentleman and went before me to catch me if I fell! (Or at least we would fall together. Haha.)

In other news, the Netherlands sizzled like a pair of eggs in an overcooked frying pan today. The Hague got to around 35C (95F) at the worst point. To be fair, we only had a few days of really high temperatures. Things are already supposed to cool off tomorrow as the wind changes and a storm rolls in. Hopefully with some thunder and lightning…

Here’s an article from regio15.nl in Dutch about how the weather was so hot today, the tram rails started shooting upwards (!). There were also a lot of issues with bridges getting stuck and not opening due to the heat. There’s also a live blog about the weather over at NOS, one of the public broadcasters in the Netherlands.

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Construction in the city centre (Or: Different road signs)

Posted on June 25, 2025 by Niki

You know you are in The Hague’s Chinatown when even the road signs are translated into Chinese:

I’m assuming it says what the sign in Dutch says – that the street is closed off. Technically The Hague’s Chinatown is the biggest in the country but it is still effectively one long street, or maybe two at most. Nothing like the Chinatowns in other countries.

In other news, the two day NATO summit has just ended in The Hague. The most important thing I have learned while being required to work from home is that eventually, the sounds of the helicopters flying overhead start to sound like background noise. Mostly…

But it was a much larger event than the 2014 nuclear summit (when we also had to work from home). This time there were a lot more road closures, including of highways between Schiphol Airport and The Hague. The main road next to the World Forum, where the event took place, has been closed for more than two months because they needed to build temporary buildings on top of the road to house all of the delegations and journalists. The government recommended that anyone in the Randstad area (The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam) work from home this entire week. Extinction Rebellion took advantage and decided to demonstrate again. You get the idea…

But somehow, nothing crazy happened and everyone is on the way back home. So that’s good.

Hopefully tomorrow is a return to normalcy! (Mostly.)

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A moment of quiet (Or: Just off the main road)

Posted on June 18, 2025 by Niki

Here’s a look a photo I took earlier this week:

Don’t you just wonder how it looks around the corner?

Please note that I took this photo from the public sidewalk. The gate is usually open but it is still private property after all!

Interestingly enough I first thought it was a hofje until I did a bit of research. Marco joked that I thought that because there really are so many of them in The Hague (see also Dutch Wikipedia). A hofje is a small, enclosed courtyard surrounded by houses. These areas were originally built to provide housing for elderly women and often funded by wealthy benefactors as a charitable act. They date back to the Middle Ages and can still be found in many Dutch cities, especially Haarlem and Leiden.

The Gilde Den Haag offers tours of hofjes every Tuesday and Thursday morning, although those are in Dutch. You can also see some hofjes on Open Monument day in September (also known as Heritage Days in English). In fact, there’s a lot of places that open their doors to visitors on that day.

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Another round of Takumi Ramen (Or: A leisurely lunch)

Posted on June 9, 2025 by Niki

Marco and I were out shopping in the city centre when we decided to completely upend our dinner plan and go back to Takumi Ramen on the Gedempte Gracht. Silly Niki and Marco…

Even though we went around 14:00 it was still quite full. Luckily the location is pretty big. They even have an outdoor terrace on the Rabbijn Maarsenplein.

This time I went for the Japanese curry meal with karaage (Japanese fried chicken), miso soup and a seaweed & lettuce salad.

And here is a look at a cool poster behind Marco. I thought the purple color went well with the blue wall.

(This is fairly typical. Here’s a look at some wall decorations at the other location in The Hague.)

The lowkey highlight of the weekend was a storm that passed through late last night. We got treated to some thunder and lightning for about 10-15 minutes, which is fairly rare around here. Summer weather is on its way, with temperatures around 80-85F expected this Thursday, with a chance of rain here and there due to that. Bring on the sun!

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Lays chips (Or: Would you like a box with that?)

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Niki

Last week, a controversy arrived in the Netherlands: Lay’s chips now come in a box. Why is that a problem, you ask?

Because normal sized bags of chips are 185 gram, and the new boxes are 125 gram. For the same price.

Chips van Lays in een doosje, kiloprijs schiet omhoog from nos.nl (Lay’s chips now in a box, price per kilogram skyrockets). The company says the price increase was due to the improved package, as the boxes don’t make as much noise and you can re-seal them so the chips stay fresher longer.

I for one won’t be buying a box (although that is also because there are healthier options available if you want to snack on chips). I’ll miss the Doritos, though.

Has this phenomenon started appearing in other parts of the world yet?

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Takumi Ramen (Or: A new location in the city centre)

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Niki

On Saturday, Marco, Roger and I went to a newly opened branch of Takumi Ramen on Gedempte Gracht (behind Bijenkorf, give or take). We’ve been to their location on the Herengracht many times. However, we were really looking forward to this one opening because they have tonkotsu broth-based ramen here (broth made by boiling pork bones for hours – read more at their website). The one on Herengracht does not have that.

It’s definitely the greatest quality photo, but here’s a look at my black garlic butatama tonkotsu ramen:

Although it doesn’t look like it, this was thinly sliced pork. It was unbelievably tender.

You can still see a bit of a divide between the black garlic and the pork broth in the upper left, as I hadn’t mixed it yet. Marco also received the usual “husband tax” and took my half egg for me, since I am most definitely not an egg fan. Weird, I know. The chopsticks also aren’t pictured. These days I can use chopsticks fairly well, although I still have trouble picking up rice with them.

In the upper left you can just barely see our kara-age (Japanese fried chicken) and in the upper right is my alcohol-free Kirin beer. It was for lunch after all! Not pictured was the korokke, or fried pumpkin croquettes. Perhaps it sounds a bit weird, but the pumpkin version is tasty and something I always try to order if I see it on a menu. The pumpkin inside is at more of a mushy consistency with a bit of Japanese mayonnaise on top. it is served quite hot which I like.

It goes without saying, but the ramen was delicious.

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