Simonis aan zee

“What about those beach clubs,” Billie Stormzy asked me this morning. Sentences he starts with “what about” are meant to entice me to start repeating something that happened to me. Most often, he will ask this about situations where suddenly something unexpected took place. If we’d been to the city to go to a café, and the café was full so that we had to go somewhere else, he can talk about this endlessly the days after. This time, he wants me to recount how, last week, we were going to the beach clubs at the northern beaches, but found that most of them were still closed, after which we went to El Bully instead. He reflects on how he wanted to go inside and the girls wanted to stay outside. 

“Shall we go to a beach club again?” I ask, adding: “and this time, we can go inside.” Billie Stormzy agrees and we get ready. As we do so, he asks me several times whether we will really go inside. I assure him we will. We leave the house, Billie Stormzy insisting we go walking. For quite a while, we manage to keep a good tempo. Billie Stormzy points and the house numbers and reads them aloud, until around the number 27, then asks me to read them for him. At a certain moment, he gets distracted, first by a parking machine, then by the entrance to a hotel parking – he insists he wants to press the buttons on them. That’s fine with the parking machine, but not so much for the hotel parking, where he wants to press the bell. I’m afraid this will bother the hotel staff too much, so I drag him on, much to his chagrin. Finally he gives in, but in return I have to carry him. 

I walk briskly with him to the beach, where we head for Simonis aan zee. Part of an ubiquitous franchise here in Scheveningen – Simonis runs a number of other restaurants around here – the beach club is a nice affair. All tables inside are made of glass cases through which you can see sand and shells. Billie Stormzy cheerfully checks them all out, and refuses to pick a table to sit, so I sit down at one myself, in the corner with the windows, overlooking the terrace and, beyond that, the beach and the sea. After he’s done checking out all the tables and the shells that are on display underneath their glass coverings, he starts playing peek-a-boo with the waitress who waits behind the bar until I’m ready to order. 

As soon as I put down the menu, the waitress approaches me. I pick a ginger tea for myself and an orange juice for Billie Stormzy. For lunch, I take a “trio fish”, which promises bread with salmon and the fried fish known as kibbeling, as well as a fish soup (€12,50). Billie Stormzy keeps enjoying running around in the restaurant, and I let him because there are no other patrons and the waitress seems mostly amused by his antics. Simonis aan zee is pleasantly decorated without being too over the top in its design. The colours are mostly white and wood, with red details here and there. The decoration is strongly fish-themed: plastic fishes and pictures of shellfish adorn the ceiling and the walls. Simonis, after all, became big selling fish – in fact, I was somewhat surprised to see there was meat on the menu. The stereo system plays mostly soft rock songs, including a rather awful acoustic piano version of “I think we’re alone now”, although things improve when George Michael’s timeless “Careless Whisper” comes on. 

Billie Stormzy tells me he wants to pay and leave, and I suggest we wait until the food and drink have come. When my tea and his orange juice arrive, he sips his orange juice contently through the straw the waitress has added, but after just two sips, he again announces it’s time to pay. I tell him we are still waiting for the food. “But where’s the food?” he asks, and the waitress tells him it will be ready soon. A little while later, she comes out of the kitchen and tells him that the food is here, to which he enthusiastically replies with a long “yeeeees!!!” He comes running to the table, waving his scarf around, which ends up in the salad, covered in dressing. 

I eat the lunch, and Billie Stormzy is happy to be fed bits of bread, in between running around and sneakily trying to press the buttons on the card scanner, which he knows he’s not allowed to, but he wants to do some “typening”, as he calls it – I have to drag him away several times, after which he gives up. I manage to convince him to try some of the fried fish, which he likes enough to take a few more bites. It is nice, actually: creamy and not too greasy. It makes up for the salmon, which is rather tasteless. The soup, again, is very nice, so that’s two out of three, which is good enough on a weekday. 

He's barely touched his orange juice apart from a few sips, and every once in a while he repeats he wants to pay and leave. After finishing my ginger tea, I also finish his orange juice for him and give him my card so he can pay. When that is done, he is no longer so keen on leaving anymore. He’s in a very good mood, dashing around and avoiding getting his coat put on. This week, our family was hit by a bad flu – it seems we’re getting every virus except the dreaded corona virus – and he was ill for a few days, but now he is very much up and running again. I finally manage to catch him, and after some struggling, put on his coat, scarf and hat. Then, we’re off towards the windy boulevard, heading home for his afternoon nap. 

Also on Breakfast at the Beach: Jump back in time to when I visited this place with Rihanna Gaga in 2017