La-la

0345 a.m. after a regular night out in town on a Friday, 3 of us grabbed by hunger pangs were stumbling along in our beer buzz, but after what seemed like 5kms of painful walking we saw light at the end of the tunnel when we saw “La-La” written on top of a half open “Showarma” store, some of you may know it as Doners, Kebabs, Pitas etc. etc.. for us though, that night, it was just pure and simple satisfying food… it was quite alarming that in Amsterdam, where you can find something to eat, drink, ehhmm "smoke" and "sleep with" - at any given time of the day, this hunt for food had really left us exhausted.

We quickly walked in, to be alarmed by the owner that he was shut – but if we wanted he could cook up something plain and simple like a showarma. We, the hungry dogs that we were, agreed!! Not that we wanted to eat anything else...

So the cooking started and we tried to make ourselves as comfortable on the horribly uncomfortably stacked up chairs around his little cooking counter/serving area – while a little kitten kept running around our legs.. all this while the man cooking started engaging us in some animated conversation – once he found out that we were from the motherland!!! He started off by singing Bollywood movie songs from the 60s and tried to recall names of movies from an era when our parents were yet not married.

One of us took the opportunity to also elaborate the meaning of the name of his “snack bar” – ‘La- La’ in Indian. Of course at hearing the word “Snack Bar”, the owner went livid – he said, “How dare you call this place a Snack Bar?? It is – ‘Grill Room La-La’ and duly pointed out the name in the local yellow pages.

A bit terrified by his outburst, but bolstered by the alcohol in our system, we all explained to him the meaning of the term “La-La” – “Usually a man with a big belly, who lends out money and cheats people”. He apparently did not take any offence to it at all and smiled back and said do you know why I call my “Grill Room” La-La?? We shrugged our shoulders and he turned out and sang “La la la la la la la la – Can’t get you out of my head” – as beaten up by our alcohol intake as we were, we still didn’t get the humour in that one, so he retorted ‘Oh La – La – La'.. and we were still going WTF???

The kitten by this time had run up on all our shoulders and of one our friends who claimed he is allergic to cats had the kitten clawing up his expensive shirt and he grimaced and said “Dude, take her off me” – I obliged by catching her collar and flinging her to the ground – OK disclaimer, I am all for animals and their ethical treatment, but cats shouldn’t be in “Grill Rooms” and they should not be climbing up customers shirts and anyway cats always fall on their feet, so no harm done.

But this ticked the owner off again and he tried to control his anger and explained to us that we need to show love to the cat and she would understand, saying this, he caught her with both hands and kissed her and also flung her to the ground - Only one thought going on in our head~ "Is he going to wash his hands or carry on cooking?" - the thought continues while the meat gets grilled, the fries get fried … after a minute or so he turns around and claps his hand 3 times in a way to suggest that his hands have been cleaned, our bewilderment with what we are witnessing keeps growing.

He pulls the grilling pan out and urges us to taste the meat, singing praises of his cooking, letting us know that he has been in business for 23 years and he wouldn’t have lasted if it wasn’t for the quality, he also slips in a footnote – “I am more expensive than your regular grill room, showarma guys” - and this too after he had warned us right up front that it would be a simple meal, this was anything but simple, it was the most elaborate, "pussy petting", song singing, showarma making experience that I had ever seen - It almost reminded me of a cheap Bollywood flick

The meat is nicely stacked up alongside the fries and our salivating mouths are not helping us… so we timidly ask the guy “How much?” and he goes, “30 Euros” – 30 Euros, lets put things into perspective, a similar meal in a normal showarma place would have cost 8 Euros – 30 euros is a pair of jeans in Zara, 30 Euros is 4 pizzas in a decent Italian pizzeria, 30 Euros is a return ticket from Brussels to Amsterdam, 30 euros is almost what I paid that night for all the alcohol to get me so hammered that I went to La-La Grill Room..30 Euros, if you haven’t got it as yet is a hell of a lot of money especially when you don’t even get the Pita bread with it, we asked him for the bread and he said 1 euro per bread and we said, “Thank you very much, but NO thanks” and trundle along with our food in our hand, shocked out of our wits at how easily we were conned out of our money… 30 Euros, we were murmuring and then we thought back to the happenings at the “Grill Room La – La” and our explanation of the term La- La and we realized why he has aptly called his place “La-La”