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Massimo Benvegnù, film critic for the Amsterdam Weekly, on his adoptive hometown THE DUTCH DIET When I told my friends in Venice that I was moving to Amsterdam, their biggest concern was… food. As an Italian, they thought the Dutch diet would disappoint me. But when it comes to grocery shopping here I’m spoilt for choice: organic dairy products at the Noordermarkt on Saturday, a [...]
Massimo Benvegnù, film critic for the Amsterdam Weekly, on his adoptive hometown
THE DUTCH DIET
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When I told my friends in
Venice that I was moving to
Amsterdam, their biggest
concern was… food. As an
Italian, they thought the
Dutch diet would disappoint me. But when
it comes to grocery shopping here I’m spoilt for choice:
organic dairy products at the Noordermarkt on Saturday,
a vast selection of spices at the Albert Cuypstraat market
and fresh fruit and vegetable from the daily vendors on the
Dapperstraat. This city, always a melting pot of different
culinary cultures, also has every conceivable ethnic restaurant
– from Surinamese roti to Swedish meatballs, from a full Irish
breakfast to Croatian cevapcici (grilled meats), I eat it all.
MUSEUM MANIA
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In the 17th century the “cabinet of wonders”, a piece of
furniture for displaying curiosities gathered on exotic trips,
was all the rage in Amsterdam homes. Maybe that’s how
this became the mother of all museum cities. Of course
the Rijksmuseum (www.rijksmuseum.nl) and the Van Gogh
Museum (www.vangoghmuseum.nl) are tourist favourites,
but some of my more obscure finds here have been the
Pianola museum (www.pianola.nl) and the stylish Energetica
(www.energetica.nl), a temple to all things electro-kitsch
housed in a 1903 power station.
Excitement is now growing about a major new museum
opening next year. Hermitage Amsterdam will occupy the
17th-century Amstelhof building, a nursing home until last
year, and showcase some of the vast surplus of the Hermitage
collection of St Petersburg. One of the largest museum
collections in the world, of its three million objects they show
less than 5% at any one time. I hear the first exhibition in
Amsterdam will be ‘Tsars in the 19th Century’, followed by
a Henri Matisse show.
GLOBAL VILLAGE
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Amsterdam may be a leading capital, but after living here
for a while, I soon realised it’s really a village. You bump into
people you know in the street constantly and every new face
can somehow be linked to an existing friend. Cosiness (in
Dutch gezelligheid) is a word that often comes to mind here.
In other cities “cosy” means a crammed subway car. Here,
it means hanging out in a favourite restaurant with friends
and heading off on your trusty bikes. It takes a while to get
accustomed to cycling in a group, but it’s by far the best way
to see and travel through this town.
CINEMA CAPITAL
As a film critic I spend far too much time in dark screening
rooms for work. However, if I do need a cinematic fix the
Film Museum (www.filmmuseum.nl) sits in the middle of the city’s biggest green lung, Vondelpark. Elsewhere, the
Rialto arthouse (www.rialtofilm.nl) is right next to the lovely Sarphatipark and the Kriterion theater (www.kriterion.nl) is
close to beautiful Oosterpark. Maybe it was a plan to give
obsessed moviegoers a breath of fresh air! But the true
moviegoer’s paradise has to be the Tuschinski Cinema (
Built in 1921 in pure Art Deco style, the
Tuschinski still preserves the charm of old movie theatres,
with its adorned balconies and thick carpets. Stars crowded
its stage as well as its screen – Marlene Dietrich, Edith Piaf,
Judy Garland all sang live here – and you still can catch a
flick here! See you at the popcorn stand.
