h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you've been to London, UK, Earth, you know the drill. The locals cannot cook, and even if they assure you they can you will be eating mutilated vegetables, meat that will stick between your teeth and other stuff that only makes your dentist happy.

Avoid the local cuisine. This researcher believes that like the English, the Dutch locals have started to colonize parts of the world so that they wouldn't have to be home and eat the local food. When colonialization became unfashionable, the Dutch coaxed a lot of people from their colonies to please come back with them so they could cook for them.

You will find the quaint Dutch variety of Chinese on every corner in a restaurant either called "China Garden" or "The Great Wall", but that's not really it, although "Babi Pangang" has long since replaced pea soup as the national favorite. You will find Indonesian restaurants every odd street and you will want to try "nasi goreng" served with a beer. These Indonesian restaurants can help you get over any hangover and any virulent disease if you just say "yes please" to whether you want it hot.

Perhaps the most exclusive restaurants you can find are the Surinamese ones. People in the restaurant will eyeball you and smile not understanding your presence because this food was never meant to be served outside the community it is made for and by, still by law they cannot actually chase you away. The Surinamese cuisine is a combination of African-Creole, Native South-American, Javanese, Indian and Chinese cooking habits. In a way it combines the best of those worlds but if you actually see it on your plate you might think its the worst. Do not be deceived, "Moksi Meti" is not a looker but in one out of three restaurants will make you beg for more for only about 13 Dutch guilders a dish. Also "Roti" will make you do a 30-lightyear detour just to have it again.

The best Surinamese restaurant that has seen a guide reporter is at the far side of the disreputable "Kraaienest" shopping mall and metro station far away from the Amsterdam city center in an area called the Bijlmer. The locals will assure you the area should not be visited because of crime and drugs, and will propose a trip to Edam to watch people run around with cheese, but this reporter lived in the Bijlmer for a number of years, and a) still lives, b) didn't have to look at anyone running around with cheese.

Still if you don't want to go to the Bijlmer nor to Edam but you do want to eat Surinamese, you just ask anyone appearing to be African, Indonesian, Indian or Chinese where to get the best variety.