On January 17th, We Went Dutch

We were (and still a little) uneasy about the language barrier here, but honestly, everyone we have encoutered has been very nice and quickly switches to English after hearing our American accent.  We are trying to get some basic phrases down, but it’s a challenge, not only to speak, but to read.

On our first night in Oss, we went out to dinner and our waiter offered us one of the restaurant’s English menus.  The only catch was we had to wait until one was available, the place only had 4 of them.  It was nice of him to offer but I think we could have managed our way through given some context clues and of course a little help from Google.

Well, if it was a challenge we wanted, we got it the next evening when we went out to the Groene Engle (“Green Angel”) restaurant. When the waitress noticed our accent, she apologized to us and said they did not have an English menu.  Here we go!  We did pretty well, with the help of Google and staff who offered to help us if we had any questions.  

What did we order?  Well we started with the “Broodplan geserveerd met kruidenboter, tapenade en aioli.”  Translation: “Bread plate served with herb butter, tapenade and aioli.”  Then I went with the, how you say, “Chicago Spare Ribs.”  I didn’t have to google that one, however I had to translate the description: “gelakt met een ketjapmarinade, geserveerd met een zoet-pittige says en een doekje om uw haden mee schoon the maken”  Translation: “coated with a sweet soy marinade, served with a sweet-spicy sauce and a cloth to wipe your hands with clean.” The cloth was amazing!