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A few days ago we had our midterm break and I decided to travel to one of my favourite cities, Amsterdam, to spend four nights. 

There are a lot of things I could say about why I love Amsterdam.  There’s the open, accepting, and progressive live-and-let-live sort of attitude.  There’s the beautiful canals and architecture.  There’s even the red-light district if you’re interested in that sort of thing. (And THAT turned out to be very different to explore as an adult!  I didn’t realize how much people tried to pull you in to the sex shows and such when I last went at sixteen!)  Finally, there’s the food.

As we had studied food culture and gastronomy in France and read some writings by individuals such as Julia Child, MFK Fisher, and A.J. Liebling it was only natural that we would approach Dutch cuisine with the same degree of studiousness and with a serious intent to learn.

One restaurant, if you can even call it that, really stuck in our minds.

That “restaurant” is FEBO.

FEBO (pronounced fay-bo, according to the internet) is a chain that sells burgers, fries, and snacks.  I know what you’re thinking; “What makes that Dutch?”  Well, well, well, just you wait and see.  The unique thing about FEBO is that the majority of the food products can be bought out of food vending machines in the wall, my friend.

The way it works is that you put your exact change in, press the button next to the food item you want, and the door will then open to let you grab it.  There is a change machine if you only have bills.  Fries and drinks are not in the machines, but you can buy those up at the counter.  Ice cream and milkshakes can also be bought at the counter.  I’ll admit that I find it strange that they don’t have the drinks in a vending machine considering the fact that the food is in machines.  Oh well. 

I tried five different items at FEBO and I’ll rank them for you, worst to best:

Fifth Place: The Grill burger:

This burger was honestly very, very mediocre.  The patty, like all FEBO burgers I tried, barely seemed like an edible food product.  It is topped with lettuce, which surprisingly still had some crispness to it, and an orange-coloured sauce, which I thought seemed almost similar to a thousand-island dressing.  It was sort of sweet and tangy, and definitely improved the taste of the burger overall.

I am not picky when it comes to food and so I wolfed it down (and even enjoyed it).  That being said, I can recognize that it was nothing gourmet.  Perhaps the addition of cheese or bacon could have improved it.

All in all, I’d still buy it, but not as a first choice.

Fourth Place: Vital:

The translated version of the FEBO website (www.febo.nl) describes this product as a “crispy vegetarian banquet of creamy ragout and fresh vegetable broth.”  I’d describe it as a strange stick of mystery mush that has been deep fried.  What is inside this?  I honestly couldn’t tell you.  Maybe potatoes?  Dairy?  It does seem creamy.  There’s got to be veggies too, right?

The fact that this is a more Dutch snack, as well as the fact that the mystery mush didn’t actually taste bad, brings it up to the forth place.  Quite honestly, I’d say it’s a feat of food engineering that the FEBO people were able to design something that is so pleasantly crispy on the outside and strangely mushy on the inside.

Third Place: Bacon Burger:

This burger was definitely an improvement over the Grill Burger.  It includes the same weird patty, bacon, lettuce, pickles, and a yellowish sauce with green flecks.  The sauce looked similar to a béarnaise, but of course it was not.  It was a fairly neutral tasting sauce and I’d guess that it is mayonnaise-based.  One other weird thing about this burger is that the pickles were sweet, which was strange for me because in Canada we usually have unsweet pickles on burgers.

This burger gets a higher ranking due to the addition of crispy bacon and crunchy pickles.  Everything else was on the same level as the Grill Burger.

Second Place: Chicken burger:

Plain and simple!  The chicken burger was the best sandwich out of the bunch!  It reminded me a little bit of a McDonalds junior chicken (except this was one a sesame seed bun).  On the burger there is a thin chicken patty, some sort of mayonnaise sauce, and lettuce.  I found the chicken patty to be much more appetizing than the beef one in terms of texture.  Sure, it was still not a “real” chicken texture, but if I can get down with a chicken nugget then, surely, I could eat that.  There’s not much else to say here.  Sometimes simple is best!

First Place: Kaassoufflé:

The mother of all FEBO foods.  I could eat ten right now.  I would kill for a kaassoufflé. 

This product is pastry encased, breaded, and deep-fried gouda cheese.  The Dutch eat a lot of gouda.  And, unlike other processed cheese products I’ve tried at fast food places, this one actually seems to contain real cheese.  It has a strong flavour and a perfectly crispy outside.  The fact that’s it’s real, aged cheese is good news for someone like me since real cheese contains a lot less lactose than milk.

All I can say is that if you’re going to stop at FEBO, or, honestly, if you’re going to Amsterdam at all, you must, must, MUST eat a kaassouflé.  And, sure, you could buy them at a different snack place, but why would you when FEBO grants you the independence to get it for yourself out of the wall?