The moment you discover that you know NOTHING about food

In a cozy dress without tights I ran from my car to restaurant Baut on Spaarndammerstraat. It was cold, there at the door at Baut. The balloon waved me in the right direction, I was going for the first time to the FavorFlav Top 100. Where chefs and creatives in the food field get the recognition.

That Monday evening I learned three things. 1) The new generation of Dutch chefs is impressive, ladies. I recommend you to attend such an evening as well. 2) If someone asks you at a food event if you want a bitterball, you will get a bitterball that makes angels pee on your tongue. And 3) I know NOTHING about food. Niente. Nada. Nothing.

Yes, that you have to go from the outside in with the cutlery, but those are the basic principles a.k.a. the home-garden-and-kitchen etiquette. So I know nothing about food, but I also know nothing about the person who makes the food. Yes, I know Alain Caron and Jonnie and Thérèse, by face, but if you don't know those three, then you never watch TV. With the rest, you have no idea and that's awkward. I nodded goodbye to a friendly specimen on my way to the restroom, turns out he is the god of a restaurant here in Amsterdam. I don't even dare to say out loud who it was. It's next to a museum and you can guess three times. I only realized it when he had to go on stage to receive the first copy of the cookbook from our neighbors who he was. Awkward.

The course feast began with the Brussels sprouts. Not just any Brussels sprouts, but those with airy mustard and puffed buckwheat from chef Luc Kusters. If anyone stands up and says they don't like Brussels sprouts, I will personally put them over my knee. I had never eaten Brussels sprouts of this caliber in my life. We also got a roasted carrot from Michiel van der Eerde that would make me spontaneously vegetarian. It's just that no one can guarantee me that I will get them on my plate like this every evening (and I am quite a carnivore), otherwise I would only be sniffing around carrots. The man across from me had long since realized that I was not a connoisseur, but so be it, I looked like the child who got fries for the first time.

You know that at these kinds of culinary gatherings there is also a course that you look forward to a little less. When you have two hundred people at the table who know about food (minus one), you go all out. So here came Alain Caron's famous blood sausage. With chicken liver. And sorrel. I have a deal with myself: you only say something is not your thing after you have tasted it. Except for horse meat, because I was a horse girl, so you understand that. But because of that, I have eaten ostrich steak (tastes like steak), kangaroo (that's the cow of Australia), grasshopper, and a few other things I would rather not talk about anymore.

The blood sausage was neatly wrapped on the plate, in a jacket of (it seemed) phyllo dough, but I could easily be wrong. The bearded man across from me looked extremely amused at me and my plate at this point, so I poked the fork into the sausage and cut off a bite-sized piece. Delicious guys, delicious. Unbelievable. This was the sound of my taste buds, echoing in my ears that it was blood sausage and that does things to you (to me). But I tasted it and it was a million times better than I ever thought. Lesson one of the evening: blood sausage is tastier than you think.

Lesson two is that the population of handsome chefs is increasing, just look at Freek. And look at us, because we are still talking about it a week later and that says something. Lesson three is that I am a barbarian in culinary matters, for which I sincerely apologize to all chefs. Although I suspect that the people who know about food had a great time at my ignorance that evening. Next year again.