What do you do with a massive ugly hangover? Considering that 90% of it is due to what the Esquire bar guide describes as your stomach feeling like a cold loaf of whale blubber (and an evilly toxic one at that), easy:
-Drink lots of water
-Get lots of sleep (if you’re James, you can compensate for lack of this by launching into a vicious slavering tirade about how your mother woke you up at noon. Note to James: violent diatribes during a call with John are bad. They frighten and confuse me)
-Drink more water
-Go back to bed
-Have a great big dump (don’t look at me like that, you hypocrite)
-Drink more water
-Go back to bed
-Take an insanely steaming hot shower (just sit under the water and imagine the steam melting the radioactive dioxin out of every pore)
-Feed it (the hangover — if you’re reading this, it’s taken on a personality of its own)
Feed indeed. The greatest contribution the English ever made to world culture (aside from imbuing fly-blown pestholes around the globe with funny-accented colonials, and a smattering of parts from badly assembled cars littering Europe’s roadways) is the filthily greasy breakfast — not the actual food itself (English breakfast sausages look like something the neighbor’s terrier might have left under your rose bushes) but rather the very idea of a fat-dripping arterioclogathon consisting of as much fried pig, cheese and starch as possible. Halleluja, the holy grail of hangover cures — you can’t get rid of the bastard, so you might as well tamp it down with a liberal seal of grease and let it work itself out.
No, this isn’t working out to be some sort of panegyric to the morning-after kebab run (you had those last night, right?) but a song of praise to Stout, recommended by our hotel clerk (Basic & Chic — give it a shot, it’s clean and central, the staff are friendly, and if you’re lucky, you won’t have a room facing the back courtyard while the neighbors’ colicky baby is bawling up armageddon.) In the category of “just what the doctor ordered”, Stout has bench seating outside (plus two big comfy ikea cushions up a ladder) and is pretty airy and cafe-ish indoors.
The juices are excellent, especially the orange-mango-mint-papaya-whatever-the-hell-else-they-put-in-it at the top of the menu. Breakfast is simple and passable, but the caprese salad wins (fantastic mozzarella) and the farm brodje (a big piece of bread with inordinately stupid amounts of “stuff” on top — in this case, whoopass sausage slices) is brilliant. Especially if you’re hung over. The ravioli, meh, had better, had worse, although it was nice enough, but the aged gouda focaccia took the edge off.
Service was about 50% good (i.e. one great waitress and one slightly undermotivated and not-terribly-bright one), but what the hell, this is Holland — my capable associate best described waitstaff at one place as “glacial.” Two thumbs up, check it out, and bring a hangover.
Stout
Haarlemmerstraat 73
+31 20 616 36 64
