Strandviljoen Day by Day

Strandpaviljoen Day by Day has opted for tasteful and middle of the road in its interior design. It's all shades of gray and wood, with artful lighting and sandpapered branches as decoration. The menu is designed in a kind of old fashioned style that you see a lot these days, with black and white drawings of a cow and a fish that suggest exclusive, artisan products. It's the kind of design that a lot of contemporary hipster restaurants and coffeeshops go for. A striking decoration detail is that Day by Day is the only beach club that has joined this year's Mondriaan Mania. Celebrating 100 years since the art movement known as De Stijl was founded, The Hague is covered in Mondriaan's typical black, white, yellow, blue and red squares and lines. Shops and restaurants can order a Mondriaan package to put on their windows and there's even a hotel that has entirely covered its outer wall in those colours. Or actually, Day by Day is not the only beach club to have embraced the Mondriaan year - neighbouring De Golfslag has done so too, but then I strongly suspect these two beach clubs are actually owned by the same owner: their decoration is almost identical, as is the shape of the buildings.

Among all of Day by Day's tastefulness, the waitress looks slightly out of place, dressed as she is in jogging trousers and a plain black t-shirt. To be fair, it could be that these are the only clothes currently available to her because she was surprised by the rain. At least, so were we on our way here. Heavy rainfall is covering Scheveningen today and Rihanna Gaga and me both had to use an umbrella. We're not just the two of us, today. Much to Rihanna Gaga's delight, my mother - her grandmother - has joined us. When we asked Rihanna Gaga what she wanted to do with her grandmother, she said she wanted to go to the beach, to the petting zoo and to Madurodam - and now we're ticking the boxes on that list.

As at so many other places this year, soft rock is playing. It's actually impossible to ignore the music, because it's put on very, very loud.  So loud, in fact, that it's almost impossible to have a conversation. Rihanna Gaga seems unbothered by this - remarkably so, since she normally hates loud music - but I find it hard to talk with my mum. Luckily, my girlfriend, who has also joined us for lunch, decides enough is enough and asks if they can turn the music down a bit - which the friendly waitress promptly does. Still very present, the volume at least allows us to hear each other speak and we chat a bit - Rihanna Gaga is not very pleased by all this talk, however, and will interrupt us every once in a while to propose a game. She's very much into coming up with different games and instructing us about its rules. "Now you have to be a tickling monster, and then I will run away," she tells me. This is a favourite of hers. She'll pretend to pass by insuspiciously, and then I have to suddenly leap out at her, after which she'll run to her mum or grandmother for shelter, crying with delight and pretend fright.

We're the only ones at the beach club, although towards the end, a father and his daughter also enter and sit down at a table at the other side of the beach club. There's a nice gas fire on at our table, keeping us warm. The menu is quite expensive, with sandwiches costing about two to three euros more than normally. It fits the air of exclusiveness that Day by Day seems to have chosen. I opt for a barbecue chicken wrap (€9,50), my girlfriend takes a sandwich with mackarel salad (€9,-) and my mum has a bun with a kroket (9,50).  When the food is brought, it's all a bit disappointing: portions are on the small side, and there is really nothing special about them. The only barbecue about my chicken wrap is the sauce put on it - the chicken is certainly not roasted over an open fire. My mum's rather expensive kroket bun is - well, just a regular kroket bun, with nothing on the side. Rihanna Gaga has bits from all of us, but is mostly interested in half of my mum's kroket bun.

The company, however, is good. Outside, the rain has stopped pouring and when our lunch is finished, it's time to go. My girlfriend has to go to work and for the rest of us, there's still a few boxes to tick on Rihanna Gaga's list.