During the first half of the 20th century, many Chinese people fled their country, and then tried to migrate by boat to the US, Canada, or England. Those boats usually made a stop in Rotterdam harbor, and hence a lot of Chinese migrants ended up in the Netherlands. Then, due to the postwar issues with Indonesia, a lot of Indonesians and expats came to the Netherlands.
As a result, we got a unique concept in the Netherlands: a combination of Chinese Indonesian food establishments. Those expats, and Indonesians, and Chinese obviously liked to eat the food of their former home countries, and so you got that unique combination of styles and flavours gradually adapted to the dutch palate as well. (Less spicy, more sweet, vegies cooked to death). These gradually became the de facto standard restaurants for a whole generations of a typical dutch family to have celebrations, but also for take-away diners serving ample portions of cheap food that would last you several days, etc. Eventually, every town, no matter how small, would have an establishment of some kind.
These restaurants were generally called "Chinese Indonesian Specialty Restaurant" which was usually shortened to "Chin. Ind. Spec. Rest."
It's a withering phenomenon and out of nostalgia and his love for the melancholic, Mark van Wonderen decided to photograph all the remaining establishments (1090 of them) and publish a book.
It is a distinctly dutch phenomenon and ever since our own Bob David's americana pictures i have been wondering what would be considered typically Hollandia (not being the tourist stuff like windmills and all). Well, this is it. I would have loved to have done this project myself.
https://www.chinindspecrest.nl/impressie(He probably started with a cellphone not yet intending to publish anything, which might explain the quality of some of the entries.)
