Febo

After using my first pissoir (public outdoor urinal), seeing kids walk through the red-​light district on their way to school, and helping a girl that passed out on an escalator, I thought I’d seen all the craziness the Dutch had to offer. I wasn’t even close. 4^th meal in the Amsterdam is like nothing I’ve ever seen. You can have snacks from 10 different countries, be uncomfortably full for less than € 5, don’t have to wait 1 minute and your order is never wrong. Since the concept has been extinct in the US since 2009 l’ll tell you about the pride of the Netherlands — FEBO automatiek.
Exact Change: every location is equipped with change machines but when you’re faded and famished, you just pull out whatever you have in your pocket and pay. Unfortunately the slots don’t give change so if your meal costs € 1.10 Euro and you put in € 2…tough cookies.
Delivery: you can be at home recovering from an earlier FEBO binge and enjoying your space cake dessert and not have to leave for round 2, you can order online.
Tic-​Tac FEBO: the rules of your favorite elementary school game applied to the grilled grid. The first person to eat all of the items in a horizontal (most balanced), diagonal (most variety) or vertical (least variety) row wins. Block your opponent by eating something in their row or wait until they rupture their own stomach.
FEBingO: best played in groups with a moderator, ours volunteered by saying –
«I’ll moderate, I’m still full from the bananenshow.»
There’s no prize, you may be shaving years off your life but you’d be amazed at what people do for bragging rights. Like when I ate 5 orders of ‘frites’ (French fries) in a row… I wasn’t going to let «Team America World Police» go down without a fight.
WYM: pronounced ‘whim’ is an acronym employed by my co-​workers for protection. It was a warning to ‘Watch Your Mouth’ there is someone in earshot that can get your ass fired. When FEBOing it’s to stop someone from eating something extremely hot. Thinking that vending machine food is cheap and at best warm my friend purchased, retrieved and devoured a satékroket in a flash. What he didn’t know was that the beef satay croquette has the texture of peanut butter inside. It was a little chilly outside and you could see the steam rising from his mouth even after he spit it out.
«That’s the hottest thing I’ve had in my mouth since Ryan’s Goslings!»
Glossary: Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands, half of Belgium and half of South Africa. Since you’ve probably never even heard it spoken, I’ll teach you some words I learned while living there –
Choose one: kalfsvlees (veal), kaas (cheese), kip (chicken), rundvlees (beef)
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Choose one: burger, kroket (croquette), saté (Indonesian peanut sauce), soufflé
Everything is essentially a combination of those words, for example… kipsatékroket (chicken satay croquette). Here are some that don’t fit those categories but you shouldn’t dismiss them –
Bami: if you took all the broth out of a chicken noodle soup, wrapped it in dough and fried it.
Frikandel: it was described to me as a deep-​fried hot dog except the meat is coarsely ground and there’s no casing to speak of. It’s more like a giant breakfast sausage.
Kipcorn: If chicken and corn nuggets got down to business, this would be their lovechild.
Vitaaltje: vegetarian ‘meat’ made from wheat gluten.
Counter: serves soft-​drinks and desserts like sundaes, milkshakes, slushies and roomijs (soft serve ice-​cream cones). I’m partial to the Stroopwafel sundae. Sounds like something you’d order for a bachelor party but it’s actually the Dutch word for treacle or dense, dark caramel.
Bamn! In NYC’s East Village is the only automat I’ve seen in the US but it failed after only three years. The major complaint was the food was stale or re-​fried. That’s not the case at your neighborhood FEEBZ. On the other side of the kitchen there’s staff trained to inventory, cook and replace items as fast as you can eat them. It’s a typically Dutch snack and you should definitely add it to your itinerary after visiting the Heineken museum, coffee shops, and live sex shows of course.