Having recently bought an apartment of my own, my first priority was to stake out the local food shops. A couple of hundred metres down the road is the ubiquitous Albert Heijn supermarket, which in this case has recently moved house to a larger, more impressive looking building. Hopes were therefore high. Sadly, the Spaarndammerbuurt is not the Oud-West, and the market research people at AH clearly don’t think that the largely immigrant population wants chorizo, fresh parmesan and green asparagus. Bring on the young professionals, say I! Opposite my house is a Spar – a ‘budget’ supermarket that only a few weeks ago was an utterly hopeless Edah. I went in to investigate on its opening day, and was pleased to find avocadoes and pine nuts in abundance. However, just a week later when attempting a weekly shop, I discovered that Spar was suffering from the same disease as its predecessor: empty shelves. Where I’d counted on coriander, I now found only a bunch of tired-looking chives.
More encouraging, however, are the plethora of Turkish shops dotted along the Spaarndammerstraat. My favourite, run by a chatty and polite gentleman, supplies me with butternut squash, preserved lemons, piquillo peppers, four varieties of marinated olives and something that resembles polenta but possibly isn’t. He even sells sweet potatoes but, disappointingly, only the kind that go slightly grey when cooked, and not the pretty orangey ones. A decent wine shop, however, is harder to come by, as are the Italian and Thai ingredients I like to cook with when not stuck in my North African rut. Failing a career as a food writer, perhaps I should open a deli in the area – Spanish Rioja, fresh mozzarella di bufala, kalamata olives, lemongrass, parsnips (thrown in for good measure because I love them), Sancerre, foccaccia… mmm, time for lunch I think.