Is this the end for Amsterdam’s herring stalls?

28 October 2024

Bron:TimeOut

Interview met Callum Booth van het van origine Britse Time Out Magazine: " 'Herring stands with fermented products go back to the year 1700,’ says Hans van Tellingen, a Dutch retail expert and author. He explains that, in this era, Amsterdam was home to Western Europe’s largest Jewish community, who introduced this style of fermenting to the country. Not long after, fishermen began using the same technique to preserve herring. As time progressed, the Dutch developed a palette for this sort of fermented fare, ‘even when conserving food in this manner wasn’t necessary anymore.’ This is why herring stands still exist in Amsterdam today: they reflect a Dutch taste that has lasted for hundreds of years. Even the stands themselves are institutions. As van Tellingen explains, they ‘are often family businesses that go down decades or even more than a century.’ Despite Amsterdam natives seeing the stands as part of the city’s heritage, the number of stalls selling the brined snack has dwindled as Amsterdam has developed into a tourist hub. ‘There are only nineteen herring stands left in Amsterdam,’ van Tellingen says. ‘And European coercive policies … will lead to [their] extinction.’

‘However, in Dutch we have the expression De wal keert het schip (‘the shore turns the ship’), which means something like: if enough people stand up against foolish policy, politicians will eventually listen.’ He believes that if enough Amsterdammers resist this directive from the EU, the local government will listen — and there is some evidence this could be successful. The same sort of suggested permit lottery system was meant to be rolled out in Utrecht, the fourth most populous city in the Netherlands – but, according to van Tellingen, ‘the stall entrepreneurs managed to alter the policies, so they can stay now.’ Local pushback from people in Utrecht meant that the policy was altered to reflect the stall’s legacy in the neighbourhood, with a stallholder’s connection to the area being a decisive criterion in the application process."

Lees hier het hele artikel.