A ‘Royale with Cheese’

It’s probably one of the most-recited conversations in our generation’s cinematic memory banks: the exchange between Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega at the start of Pulp Fiction as they drive around right before a job. Jules wants to know all about the hash bars in Amsterdam; Vincent hips him to beer-drinking habits there. (“You can walk into a movie theater in Amsterdam and buy a beer. And I don’t mean just like in no paper cup, I’m talking about a glass of beer.”)

Then they discuss the “little differences” in Europe, such as the menus at McDonald’s. I’ve been interested in this subject for some time, so when I recently visited Amsterdam, I had to visit a McDonald’s, just to see what was what. Particularly, I was interested to know whether you could order a Royale with Cheese. This was supposedly the alternative name for a Quarter Pounder in Europe. Why? Because, as Vincent explains, “they got the metric system, they wouldn’t know what the f**k a Quarter Pounder is.”

So guess what? You walk into a McDonald’s in Amsterdam and it’s pretty much like a McDonald’s anywhere in America. It’s brightly garish, with Shrek merchandising tie-ins and Value Meals and things that somehow just don’t translate into Dutch (like “Filet-O-Fish”).

But, as Vincent sagely observes, there are the “little differences.” The menu has a few added items, beverages to cater to the Dutch who prefer not to shlurp down American soft drinks with abandon. There is Vittel bottled water. There is Tropicana Orange Juice. They stock yoghurt in the chiller, not just McFlurries. Other little differences: “Koffie” and “thee” instead of coffee and tea, of course; “Warme chocolademelk” instead of Swiss Miss hot cocoa; and something called “Biologische melk” which I suspect is teeming with bio-organisms.

You’ve also got your McKroket (a veal beef patty on a sesame-seed bun), your Dubbele Cheeseburger (self-explanatory), McNuggets Kip (don’t know what Kip is) and a Premium Burger. The most unusual item on the menu seems to be the Mythic Chicken Salsa Meal (at 5.65 euros), consisting of fries, a soft drink and a chicken burger with Monterey Jack, tomato, lettuce, some kind of salsa sauce and sesame-seed bun.

And then, there it is: The Big Mac. Not “Le Big Mac,” as claimed in Pulp Fiction. And up above it on the menu, in big white letters: A Quarter Pounder.

It wasn’t until later, when I reviewed the script of Pulp at home, that I realized I had totally misremembered the dialogue: Vincent had slyly segued into talking about Paris, not Amsterdam, when referring to Le Big Mac and Royale with Cheese. Still: they have the metric system in both Paris and Amsterdam. So at the very least, Vince’s logic is a little dubious (“they wouldn’t know what a Quarter Pounder is”).

Despite these differences, you do notice some annoying global similarities at the McDonald’s in Amsterdam. The employees are all wearing obnoxious “I’m Lovin’ It” T-shirts. There’s no attempt to even go Dutch with the nomenclature.

Further research on the Net showed me that the Paris McDonald’s does in fact serve a “Royale Cheese,” along with pommes frites and other stubbornly Gallic variations on corporate naming. That’s so French.

‘Tell me again about the hash bars’

The Dutch, arguably, are more easygoing and laid-back than the French owing to the existence of the “hash bars” that Jules showed particular interest in. (The Dutch refer to them euphemistically as “coffeehouses” and they do serve coffee, among other illicit items, in edible and smokable forms. Menus are presented, selections are made, just like in any regular restaurant. When our bus tour guide was explaining in her gentle Dutch accent that Amsterdam was very open and liberal about soft drinks, I did a confused double-take; it took me several moments to realize that she had said soft drugs.)

The other explanation for the lack of colorful variations among McDonald’s menus in Amsterdam is not that Quentin Tarantino was taking poetic license, but that it’s mostly Americans who find themselves stumbling into these places, seeking familiar-sounding things to nosh on. Or maybe it’s just that the brand recognition is universal. I’ve always found it strange that so many foreigners work in McDonald’s across the globe, places where they may not have mastered the local language, but are still forced to wrap their tongues around invented names like “Filet-O-Fish” and “McNuggets.”

The other bit of Amsterdam lore in the Pulp Fiction exchange concerns ketchup. Vincent asks, “You know what they put on French fries in Holland instead of ketchup? Mayonnaise. I’ve seen ‘em do it, man, they drown ‘em in that s**t.” This part is true. Everywhere you order French fries in Amsterdam, they are served with a little tub of mayonnaise. Don’t know why this is. Perhaps someone could do a sociological study on the failure of the tomato to flourish in Dutch cuisine. And in the Amsterdam McDonald’s, annoyingly, you are charged extra for every little ketchup pack (some minimal amount less than a euro, but still).

All this research was making me curious about the other foreign fast-food joints that co-existed with McDonald’s in Amsterdam. Among the gabled houses and cobbled streets, there was a KFC, a Delifrance, a Subway and a Burger King. So what, you may be wondering, do they call a Whopper in Amsterdam?

I don’t know. I didn’t go into Burger King.