Tomorrow's Christmas Eve and we will travel to spend it with my mum in the morning, after which we will join the in-laws (as a manner of saying, because my partner and me are not lawfully wedded...) for Christmas day, returning to Scheveningen on Boxing day. So, today it's just us and to celebrate being together, we're going to eat pancakes.
Rihanna Gaga - she's a very big girl now, who can read long, complicated words like 'Pannenkoekenhuisje' (she's a bit ahead in this), and doesn't have the patience anymore to go for breakfast every week with her father. But tell her that her best friend is coming along and she'll go anywhere. It's amazing how fond Billie Stormzy is of her. Just this morning, I noticed how his whole face brightened the moment she walked into the room and yesterday, when I was spending alone with him and he was being whiney as babies of his age sometimes are, I only needed to play a recording of her voice to cheer him up. The feeling is mutual - she loves her brother and can't get enough of playing and cuddling with him. There's a picture I cherish very much, taken just a few hours after she saw him for the first time - they're lying in bed together and she's carefully caressing his forehead, gazing intently at her newly born baby brother, a mixture of love, bemusement and wonder in her eyes, while he's lying there, looking safe and content in the presence of his big sister. That's been their relation ever since, although she's far more at ease with him by now. She's a good example for him - confident, smart and fun-loving - and I hope he'll take after her. She's not a wise-cracker, but if necessary, she'll speak her mind and she can't stand injustice. In short, she's the best big sister a little brother could hope for.
Rihanna Gaga and I have been her before, which led to one of the very few downright negative reviews on this blog. So today, a little over two years onwards, 't Pannenkoekenhuisje gets the chance to redeem itself. It's a bit chilly inside, so we sit down in a corner quite far away from the open door. The place is stylish in a ye olden Dutch way: red and white checkered pillows, fake wooden tables and menus that are printed as if they are old brown enveloppes. The building itself is kind of amazing. I always find it difficult to tell exactly how everything fits together here - there's last week's De Beren which, together with the adjacent Sea Life, is located in a building that is probably from the 1980s. But 't Pannenkoekenhuisje and the other restaurants around it are situated in older buildings, somehow connected or stuck to the Kurhaus. This shows in the wonderful wooden arches that separate the restaurant proper from its permanently covered terrace, in front of which there is another terrace that is proper outdoors. All the restaurants here follow this pattern: there's the small stone part that is probably the original store or eatery, in front of which there is a large covered area that can hardly be told apart from the real inside part, and then there is the outside terrace. But only in 't Pannenkoekenhuisje there is still so much that seems to be from the original, turn of the last century building. Large wooden beams across the ceiling, supported by wooden carved heads - Rihanna Gaga's friend is at first scared by them, saying she initially though these were real people - arched wooden frames that once held windows (with a touch of art nouveau) and the open kitchen, which is also surrounded by a beautifully carved wooden structure.The amount of pancakes I ate with Rihanna Gaga when I was visiting places with her in Tunisia! It was always crêpe chocolat for her and a tuna/cheese-pancake for me. So, for old time's sake, I pick the melted tuna pancake (€14,50). Rihanna Gaga and her friend pick a regular pancake which they want to cover with syrup and powdered sugar (Tunisia is now so long ago that she doesn't automatically assume that a pancake should have chocolate on it) and my partner picks those typically Dutch mini pancakes called 'poffertjes'.
Service is swift and friendly, delivered by a small army of young women in their early twenties, all dressed in jeans and black sweaters - not a uniform, because each girl wears different clothes, but the pattern is the same for all. In the kitchen, a bald man is cooking as if his life depends on it, an anxious look on his face. This looks promising: he clearly means business when he pours the pancake mixture in a pan from a great height and starts shaking the pan above a fire with slow, rythmic movements.
Billie Stormzy wants out of his pram, so I put him on my lap. He gazes intently at the three in front of him (Rihanna Gaga, her friend and my partner), but is at first very relaxed. He's had a rough few days, crying a lot and reverting to waking about every three hours in the night. I'm quite exhausted and the crying has had a nerve-wrecking effect on my tinitus (something I unfortunately developed towards the end of our stayin Tunisia and which makes high-pitched and shrill noises into a kind of torture), so it's interesting to see that here, in this chaotic place full of smells, noises and movement, he's so much more relaxed. Especially so because he is, normally, very sensitive. The slightest sound, gesture or change in atmosphere can get him anxious or shocked, but here he seems to be quite content. He looks around him pensively and settles nicely against my chest.
The girls are playing baby - they act as if they're very small children bickering and playing together - and are having much fun doing so. They're so lost in their fantasy world that when they find a colouring book, they colour it in the style of a two year old, then come to me to proudly show their work.
The pancakes are, luckily, better than they were two years ago. I still wouldn't say they are of the quality you may expect from a place that is named after the product, but they're good enough. Mine is a full meal, with good cheese, crumpled tuna and fresh tomatoes and ruccola. The girls' child's sized pancakes are so big that I am very happy I didn't opt for the regular size for them. Rihanna Gaga's friend can't even finish hers, but Rihanna Gaga, who is normally anything but a big eater, happily does that for her. Billie Stormzy, in the meantime, is becoming hungry too, so I pause eating my enormous pancake - I could do with a break anyway - to make him a bottle of milk (I always carry a thermos flask with hot, and a bittle with cold water for this, as well as instant milk) and feed him. After that, I hand him to my partner to finish the pancake. When I'm finished, I flush it down with my fresh mint tea - lukewarm mint water by now. It's time to go: I promised the girls to take them to the indoor playground at the nearby Pier, and Billie Stormzy is now really getting too agitated by all the impressions in the restaurant, which is getting busier and busier by the minute. While my partner dresses the little one and put him in his pram, I pay and call the girls. Soon, we're on our way - my partner is returning home, and Billie Stormzy, the girls and I cross the windy boulevard to make our way to the Pier.
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