What is joost up to?

There I am at the EP restaurant queing to pay for my food. The cashier greets me in a violent pink Tshirt that has a bold print at the top that says: ‘Push my buttons’. Below that is the image of a computer keyboard printed across her boobs.

I kinda like the EP restaurant…

I’m having guests over tomorrow and my guest room was missing a somewhat rather important item, a bed. So, last Friday I went to Ikea and bought a bed along with a slat base (I had to Google that term, where I come from it’s a ‘lattenbodem’). Since today is a holiday in Belgium, I figured I’d quickly put the thing together, and all is well. Putting the (Malm) bed together was easy enough, but boy oh boy was I in for a treat when I started to put the slat base together.

The Ikea Sultan Laxeby (http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/60109912) is the most tasking piece of Ikea goods I’ve ever put together. It is simply nerve wracking. It comes in a box as a collection of a cool 276 individual pieces (I’ve counted them) and putting them together feels like an anger-management workshop.

I think the Laxeby is a wonderful product, not so much to put your mattress on, but rather to be used by HR people. Got a bunch of candidates for a job? Put them together in a room and let them assemble a Laxeby, anybody walking out of that room with a cool head is worth hiring.

I was too late to go to the store tonight (can somebody explain me why stores in Brussels aren’t open longer than in the hole in the ground I used to live before) so I figured I’d grab a quick bite to eat at the place that sits exactly between the shop and my front door, the Brussels Grill (www.brussels-grill.be).

As soon as I sat down, I sensed some disturbance in the force, there seemed to be a disproportionate amount of American tourists. Another thing is that the place is completely packed with staff. There were nine people running around just outside, and when I say running around I mean standing around looking bored, twiddling their mobiles and smoking. Without any exception they all looked the same, girls in their twenties, I assume they are hired because they are supposed to be hot, but the vast void behind their eyes doesn’t really do it for me. Anyway, all this to say that they weren’t especially friendly, and I’m being generous here, they seemed to expect me to somehow be thankful they would grace my table with their fake smile.

Anyway, I was willing to look passed all that and try the food. After all, I already had my coke and there was little wrong with that. I wanted to try the salad but they looked rather rubbish, and the place is called Brussels grill, so I want for the grilled salmon (the fries that came with it played a big role in me decision making process). Somewhat later, out comes one of the blonde zombies (the majority of them are actually dark-haired types from regions even more south than Italy) with my plate and after checking three different tables to see of they were by any chance waiting for salmon, I decided to give her a hand an kindly inform her that it was probably mine.

Mine it was, and terrible it was too. The fries were an insult to Belgium, soaked in fat it seemed they had been fried six times before they landed on my plate. But the worst part was the salmon. I don’t know what exactly they did with it, but I am 95% sure they just tossed it in the frying pan and let it sit there for a while as it transformed from what I assume was a deep-frozen lump of fish, to some hot and crunchy chunk of something that somewhere deep inside still had some resemblance to salmon.

As if the style of the staff didn’t make it obvious (one girl had a hairdo so high maintenance that it rendered her practically incapable to do any work) looks are important in this place, so sure enough they passed my salmon over the grill, and burned them signature lines in them that make it look so yummy. A mockery it was.

Here’s the message: If you care just the tiniest amount about food, do not go to this place. You will regret it. As I do.