Oma Toos

It's a Friday evening and it's getting dark. My girlfriend is ill and needs a rest, so I decided to return home early and take Rihanna Gaga out. When I asked her if she wanted to join me to go eating, she shook her head.
"I don't want to go to a restaurant," she said.
"Not even when there's pancakes?"
"Oh yes, pancakes!"
So I took her to Oma Toos, a restaurant in the harbour serving 'traditional Dutch food', including pancakes and 'poffertjes' (mini-pancakes served with powdered sugar).

When we arrived, the friendly waiter opened the door for us and started talking to Rihanna Gaga. A bit overwhelmed, she hid behind me and we picked a table to sit down. An equally friendly waitress who brought the menu, was equally ignored by Rihanna Gaga, although she did manage to find out the little one wanted to drink chocolate. I take a Grimsbergen Tripel beer myself and enjoy the view over the sailing boats in this part of the harbour. Evening is falling and it's slowly getting darker.

Oma Toos is very child friendly. It has a large playing corner with toys, blackboards and books, as well as a television playing Disney films ("that keeps them quiet", I heard the waitress say to one of the customers). From the moment we entered, Rihanna Gaga was quite eager to go to the playing corner, but kept returning to the table because the chatty waiter and waitress made her a bit shy. So I decided to move to a table closer to the playing corner. This worked. Rihanna Gaga picks up her doll and walks over to the playing corner. There, she sits down on a pillow and starts feeding the doll, a little anthroposophic gnome dressed in red, made by my girlfriend's mother, her grandmother.

She's always liked playing with dolls, but this has increased even more since she's been going to her new daycare. There, she's found a group of friends who all, just like her, bring their doll to daycare and with whom she then takes care of 'the babies'. From how well she does this, you can see she's observed the women from the daycare closely when they are caring for the babies.  In fact, this gives us a little insight (albeit, of course, an unreliable one) into what she sees at daycare and it's remarkable to see the differences between when she went to Tunisian daycare (little eye contact and interaction with her dolls) and Dutch daycare (lots of kisses, eye contact, interaction). Another thing she picked up since going to the Dutch daycare is that she now wants to be a princess and I'm still dreading the moment that everything has to be pink.

It takes quite long before I can order and it turns out the waitress thought we were waiting for someone else to join us. I take a fish stew (€15,50) and Rihanna Gaga wants a chocolate pancake (€5,50). When the food is brought, Rihanna Gaga is surprised I'm not having a pancake myself. She wants to know why this is and I tell her I preferred fish today - but she seems to think this is not a good enough reason for not having pancake, because she keeps returning to the subject, inquiring why I'm not eating a pancake like her. The fish stew is, however, delicious: a rich mix of mashed potatoes, leek, smoked salmon, white fish and shrimps.

After she's finished about two thirds of her pancake, Rihanna Gaga wants to return to the playing corner and stays there for most of the evening while I read. Every once in a while, she pokes me or sits down to eat some more pancake, but soon enough she returns to the other boys and girls with whom she watches films and plays. Around a quarter past seven, I decide it's time to go, but Rihanna Gaga wants to have none of that. I decide to have a tea and read a little bit, while reminding Rihanna Gaga we're about to go anytime soon. She keeps shaking her head and when it becomes clear we really are about to leave, she puts her face on five-minutes-to-crying. The waitress saves the day by announcing that Rihanna Gaga can have a little present, right after she's put on her coat, shoes and scarfe. It's an idea that's brilliant in its simplicity and shows how much Oma Toos is geared towards children: right next to the cashier, there's a wooden barrel filled with newspaper snippets. I remember this from my childhood: you put your arm in the paper snippets and search around until you get hold off something. Rihanna Gaga's interest is piqued and she allows me to dress her. She doesn't dare, however, to put her arm in, so I do that for her and pick up a small wind up toy for her, a ladybird. She's very happy with the little thing and when we leave the restaurant she tries it out on the tables standing in front of it. Then, we get on my bike to go home.