Illustration by Marloes Bomers

ARE YOU FINISHED WITH THAT?
Episode 1: Cafe Plop

A large orange mushroom has popped up on Mercatorplein. It’s the newly-opened Cafe Zurich and it’s meant to bring more glam to the gentrifying De Baarsjes neighbourhood. Many locals already call it ‘Cafe Plop’, a reference to a deeply odd children’s TV show starring the singing gnome Plop, who deals milk from his cosy little ’shroom shack.

It is indeed suspicious that a mushroom would grow exactly here on Mercatorplein. The only time this square made any global headlines was in 2007, when the city initiated a blowverbod (‘blow ban’) for the area to discourage multiculti youth from hanging out, smoking dope and making smartass comments to passers-by. Critics of the plan pointed out that the ban, and the accompanying €50 fine for anyone caught toking in public, merely distracted from the real issues around this traditionally working-class and therefore long-neglected neighbourhood.

Only the sign itself — a red circle enclosing a joint expelling black smoke dotted with white marijuana leaves — had any real impact. Within hours of being installed it was stolen. Who could resist? Such is the poetic way of the world. Eventually the authorities, after welding a replacement sign into place, recognised the hole in the market and started to sell the signs themselves, at an absurdly inflated price of €90, along with a snazzy selection of t-shirts and stickers. Foreign orders flew in.

And now we have this orange mushroom. I don’t want to come across as sour or that I have a particular itch to scratch, but Cafe Zurich seems too formulated, almost cynical. On first impression, it’s easy to imagine that the plans arose after some city marketing bureaucrat had an eureka along the lines of: ‘Hey let’s take this blowverbod hype to the next level and make Mercatorplein a psychedelic tourist Mecca by popping a magic-looking mushroom in the middle of it!’

The official story goes that the architect came up with the building’s design by combining different elements found around the square: the reddish-orange bricks of the Amsterdam School of architecture, the many headscarf-wearing women, etcetera. All these different influences were then merged to result in this mushroom-shaped building.

This creative process is somewhat reminiscent of the story around the newish artwork ‘How to Meet an Angel’, by the happily subversive Russian artist Ilya Kabakov and his wife Emilia. It’s found on top of the Mentrum mental heath clinic on 1e Constantijn Huygensstraat, and is a sculpture of someone climbing a ladder above the roof and reaching for a higher place. But it can also be seen as someone preparing to make a suicide leap — not exactly the ideal image of a perfect ‘mental health moment’. Even after long and in-depth planning, where the plans were endlessly screened by city government, mental health workers and local residents, no one seemed to make this dual connection. It only became obvious when it was finished.

Meanwhile our large orange mushroom is meant to mirror De Baarsjes neighbourhood’s speedy gentrification. The Mercatorplein has just received its second makeover in a decade and now even includes a new fountain — always a sign that a hood is hoping to elevate. All these actions would likely make the guru of city planners everywhere, Richard Florida, proud. His recipe: 1) take a rundown area; 2) invite some scrappy artists to set up their studios; 3) which in turn will attract hipsters; 4) which in turn will eventually attract moneyed hipsters; 5) at which point bars and restaurants will start popping up like mushrooms until full gentrification has been achieved.

In the local press, Cafe Zurich’s proprietors (who also own the lovely Westergasterras and the trendy Caffe Oslo) sound very Florida-esque. They say that while they want to attract hipsters away from the city centre, they also want to be laagdrempelig (‘low thresholdy’) enough to attract locals. And indeed, the cafe follows the approach established locally by Cafe-Restaurant Amsterdam a decade or two back when they began offering a full range of prices and options: from beer and bitterballen at the bar, to fancy wine and oysters at a table.

But from what I heard, it wasn’t the neighbourhood that needed to adapt to Cafe Zurich but the employees to the neighbourhood. A friend who went to the opening ended up feeling judged as ‘too street’ — and it’s true, he always wears a baseball cap. He paid for his drink with a five but the waiter thought he paid with a ten. When my friend tried to return the extra five, the waiter panicked and assumed that my friend was just trying to scam more money back. Eventually my friend gave up and kept the five.

So I decided to put on my baseball cap, pack some low denomination bills and check it out for myself. The building actually looks quite nice from closer up: not as mushroomy. It turned out to be less ‘Forest-Dwelling Dwarf’ and more ‘IKEA Alpine’ (and I mean that in a good way). However one must be careful when approaching, since you can easily wet your knees by accidentally walking through the series of bidet-like spurts that make up the square’s new fountain.

Once inside, the restaurant’s seating proved very comfortable, and with enough space to keep your conversation private while at the same time observing what everyone else is eating. The broodjes looked huge and fantastic, so my dining companion and I ordered a couple. The very friendly waitress told us that it will take a little extra time since the bread had to be baked off fresh in the oven. No problem: we were in no hurry, and figured we’d be sated soon enough. When the sandwiches eventually came, they indeed looked and tasted great. BUT, they were tiny, obviously cut from a short end of a round loaf. I spent the rest of my meal — or rather, snack — hating my neighbours and the size of their sandwiches. What put salt in the wound was how I had been led to believe that this place was about bringing different communities together — something that’s usually easy to achieve with a bit of food and drink — but instead they divided their clientele into haves and have-nots. And like most folks, I hate being a have-not.

But anyway, Cafe Plop still seems worthy of a proper restaurant review once it has grown some moss and moulded more to its surroundings.