snackbar corral.

This post was started a loooong time ago, I'm just putting it up here now to remind me force myself to finish it. It's eventually going to be fantastic, truss me.

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I've been very, very slowly conducting an Amsterdam shoarma/shawarma/doner/döner taste test. Like over the last eight years. Here's the data I've collected to date.

1) It's a challenge to take an appetizing photo of either of these sandwiches. This is a döner from Sphinx after riding around in my bag for an hour or so.



2) Like any classic sandwichy object, there is an art to putting these things together properly, and 97% of Amsterdam snackbars just don't give a shit, because they don't have to. Or at least 97% of the Amsterdam snackbars I've been to don't give a shit, which is probably about 2% of the snackbars in Amsterdam, so yes I can see how it could be that this is a sweeping, unfounded generalization.

And yet!!! I know it's true. I would wager that if you randomly tested Amsterdam snackbars for sandwich-construction shitgiving, you'd find yourself coming to a similar conclusion.

3) On a heartening note: most of the time you find yourself eating shoarma or döner, you yourself are not giving much of a shit about sandwich construction either. It's usually somewhere between 1 and 4 in the morning, and you are probably looking about as disheveled as your sandwich and tasting way less good if we decide to continue that metaphor/simile.

4) There are places that do care about one or more facets of sandwich-making, and these finer establishments have risen to the top of my "I would consider biking an extra 10 minutes to eat their shoarma rather than tolerate the default non-shit-giving place on the corner" list.

Ali Baba.
Mesut.
Sphinx.

More detail eventually.

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Unrelatedly: Marqt on the Haarlemmerstrat opened, must say it's not very interesting at all. Half Natuurwinkel, half Jumbo, plus a nice cheese counter and some interesting shellfish. Otherwise, nothing to get excited about.

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