i didn't have any real doubt about having fun in amsterdam. i'm obscenely happy just to be able to smoke both the gauloise and the weed at the bar. that's enough! but then there's the casino...
when martin and kate heard helen and i were going to amsterdam, they strongly recommended supper club. martin told me about it one night, but we were drinking heavy, and so it was all a little cloudy. i didn't really pay that much attention to be honest, because with coffee shop + casino, i am in need of nothing.
when they left new york, they said they'd make reservations for us.
supper club is across an alley from the coffee shop abraxas, about three blocks from the dam square. if we hadn't been told this, we would never have found it. abraxas has a sign pointing into the alley; supper club has only a small gold nameplate on a door, and it's one of many. you ring to get in.
they had in fact made reservations for us. thank you, martin and kate!!!
first stop was to the coat room. maybe silly, but i thought the lucky strike machine playing arty video ads was pretty keen. also: bathrooms are split into homo and hetero. it wasn't my first dual-sex public toilet, but it always seems fascinating in an oddly filthy way. hmm. that should be 'literally' and not 'oddly'.
the main dining room is a large open space. along the length of both walls run enormous beds, probably about six feet by sixty or seventy-five, with pillows against the wall. small tables (like those breakfast-in-bed trays, but glass and metal) are all that demarcate each dining space. you take your shoes off and climb up (the wait staff sort of lounge at the foot of the bed when taking orders. pretty funny in person). the balconies looked to have beds like ours, but i never went up. there's a d.j. by the room's entrance (the picture above is taken from there). at the other end is the opening to the kitchen, the bar, and a chunk of wall above where they show video. other lighting is subdued but colorful. it all looks super-posh, but lofty enough to be friendly.
price is fixed for five courses. no warning on the courses; they like 'surprise'. i had hazy memories of martin saying this, but felt the true impact of the philosophy at first course: steak tartare, topped with a crunchy bit. yep, the surprise was in that crunchy bit. i don't mind my raw meat. i've had the raw flesh in sushi, carpaccio, and steak tartare (tho only once before on that one). and exotics are within reason, too: elk, ostrich, frog, deer, even friggin' monk fish liver. but i've never had brains.
i was a bit worried about dinner focusing on shock value, but it wasn't that way. next up (after about 20 minutes) was this excellent mushroom soup served in glasses with what helen calls 'cheese straws' (like a flakey bread stick) wrapped at the end in prosciutto. very nice! the glasses were a solid idea, too, considering our reclined position.
at this point, i had to know: can i smoke the weed? the woman at the coat room had only told us we could smoke 'anything but crack'. our hostess confirmed: smoking of tobacco, marijuana and hashish is allowed. fuckin'-a! so i smoked it!
next up was a fish course with two sauces, one of which we learned later was cauliflower-based. tasty, and i'm sketchy about fish. just after that, right as i began to roll the next spliff, a woman comes by selling massages. helen took her up on it while i worked on the smoke. it had to be about the most perfect moment i've ever found myself in.
i began to worry.
if there was a catch to all this beauty, it would have to surface soon. and it hit me: the drinks. they didn't have any irish whiskey, but they found one 'with a black label' that i liked. it seems everywhere i've been in europe lately, the alcohol in the drinks is measured and scant, so i always order doubles. at this point, i'd had many doubles. i suddenly imagined a bar tab of four hundred euro. while helen was massaged, i began to debate with myself about how much money this was going to cost us, and could i see the bill without choking. so far, we'd had absolutely no idea. a double whiskey can be six euro in a grotty dublin pub. since everything's measured, a double really costs double, and isn't just a subtle request to put some liquor in there this time, dierdre. i imagined my drinks might be costing me twenty-five dollars u.s. each. could happen! so i was crass, and had to ask. ten euro! hoorah! i could afford many more!
my fears were allayed. helen's massage was good. the joint was smoked. next course was meat something with vegetables, also very nice. then the lovely young exotic dancer! she was dressed in some sort of mother nature costume and had the most perfect ass helen's ever seen. i don't think i've ever heard so much phwoar! and cor! come out of her. (the best, tho: i just want to bite her arse!) i agreed, especially when if anything like this happened in new york, entertainment would have undoubtedly been yet another lip-syncing drag queen.
dessert was a bit of sherbet with cream, almonds, and pineapple marinated in some liqueur. brandy, maybe. once again, quality stuff. i was starting to get fidgety at this point, the fever building for the gambling. still, helen and i stayed and drank for some time, and were some of the last to leave. it was just so magical. when the moment of truth arrived, the entire bill, including by now at least a dozen whiskeys, was only two hundred euro. amazing! the base price was only sixty-five euro each, so they did us generous when adding our drinks tab. thanks, supper club!
they also told us that there are theme nights. we'd just missed hospital night, where they drive you to your bed in a wheel chair.
then it was out into the snow and off to the casino. i believe i mentioned: fuckin-a! amsterdam!
.
at this point.
.