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Anyone speak Chinese? I’ve checked tons of dim sum menus online, but I cannot find out what ‘Hoi Tjie Fan Dai’ means. That’s what this pork (?) dish was called on the Dutch/Chinese menu.

Tjie = Jee / Gee = Pork

A-Fusion is a really nice place stuck between the mostly grisly looking shops and restaurants on Zeedijk. Once you’re inside it’s kind of hip and trendy in a cool Asian way. I tried their bubble tea, they’ve got tons of different flavours, but I have to say I thought the coffee flavoured one I tried was a little bland. I prefer the Indonesian version of this type of drink, called ‘cendol‘.

I also tried their ‘thigh’ meat (deep fried battered chicken) and siu long bao. I’m not an expert, but I think the siu long bao was too dry. Descriptions of the dish always warn for the hot broth that spills from the dumplings once you bite them.

Service was a little hapless, though I noticed they were a lot more attentive to their regulars.

Utrechtsestraat, Saturday afternoon. I’m in search of pork belly but the luxury butcher is all out of pig.

‘We had to send it back, it wasn’t right.’

Poor piggie. Murdered to death and then discarded.

I try my luck at the butcher on the other side of the road. Inside, it’s like going back to the very early 70s. Knorr products on the shelves, the packaging bleached by the sun, sparse cuts of pale meat on show. A little dusty. Very open air museum. This is the Holland you want to forget.

The butcher looks more like a penny-saving grocer. Protestant and painfully repressed. One manky eye looks sideways, while the other stares straight ahead. He helps another client, taking his time. I’m in no hurry, so I wait while he makes their cut meat sandwiches. Finally, they’re done.

“Do you have any pork belly?” I ask.

“I do,” he says and makes for the storage room, then returns. “You’re going to make babi pangang, aren’t you?”

Balls. He’s cut the skin off. I’m not making the chinese roast pork dish he’s referring too, but I do need the meat uncut for my epaisse tranche de lard dans son jus. Should I slap his wrist for assuming an Asian-looking woman must be cooking Chinese food?

“I’ve cut the skin off, you see.”

I see.

“I cut the skin off the minute I get it in, before I store it,” he says in a way that there’s no mistaking… cutting the skin off is. the. right. thing. to do.

Oh.

“You have a better chance finding some at the Albert Cuyp market. The butchers there…” he sniffs, “I call them dirty butchers.”

I smile thinly and thank him. He’s sorry I had to wait so long. I’m sorry I ever met him.