Wall food

Having grown up in the rural countryside surrounding the sleepy little village of Ligonier, I was not accustomed to having many late night options for satisfying the post-party munchies. Town pretty much rolled up the streets and turned off the lights at 10:00PM.

So I distinctly remember the feeling of empowerment when I was shipped off to university in Indiana Pennsylvania. This was a college town and we could order pizza for delivery until 2.00 AM (including the paper towels to mop the grease off the top) and the world famous Sheetz devil dogs (2 for $.99) were available 24-hours-a-day. This was the big time! There was something magical about being able to hop on my bike at 5:30 AM after an all-night bender of drinking-games and dancing on the kitchen stove to pick up bacon and eggs so that I could cook breakfast for some hot chick who only hung around us for the endless pitchers of free beer. She was so impressed by this act of breakfast chivalry that she wrote her phone number on my wall with a thick, black permanent marker and decided to marry me and hang around for the next 20 years. I’m still doing all the cooking and she’s never paid me back for the security deposit that my landlord kept for the marker damage she caused. Go figure.

But those days seem like the dark-ages now. Here in Holland they’ve taken the art of late night snacking to new, technologically advanced heights. Here, they eat from the wall. That’s right…from the wall. They have restaurants (and I use that term very, very loosely) that are set up like giant vending machines that you can get a hot, greasy snack virtually any time of day or night. There is a ‘chef’ who gets each portion fresh from the freezer and carefully prepares them (a.k.a. places into the deep fryer) before reloading the wall for your all-day dining pleasure. And the choices are extraordinary! Just click on this “Assortment” link to see such delicacies as Bami stuffed krokant, chicken corn dog, or this month’s special – Deep Fried Goulash for only 1 Euro! Mmmm….goulash.

The wall ...


...with technologically advanced distribution system.

I ate from the wall once in Amsterdam, just to try it. I plunked in my Euro and selected a wrinkly looking Frikadel. It was, um, how should I say this? Interesting. I'll leave it at that except to say that I wish I still had a stomach of steel like back in college. On a good night, if I had had enough to drink, I could eat 4 devil dogs. Maybe that was my problem with the wall in Amsterdam. I was sober when I tried it.