‘If you haven’t experienced anything here, then you haven’t been paying attention’

In a series of articles examining de Volkskrant the importance of club culture and nightlife. Episode 5: why it is also part of a healthy nightlife to end up in the snack bar at the end of a night out.

In snack bar De Hoek, a young woman with long, curly hair is sitting alone at a table on Saturday night. She has her hands folded in front of her face, as if she is crying. In the primitive chaos around her people shout, eat, eat and wait for orders in groups. Then suddenly vomit flows from her mouth, in creamy waves, through her fingers, into that long curly hair, into the sleeves of her coat and onto the table. Behind her is a guest waving two frikandels. He doesn’t notice anything.

She’ll be there for a few more minutes. Then she gets up and walks outside, past the wall of epicurean commandments in a chalkboard font. ‘Convenience serves people’, it says. ‘Eat, drink and enjoy.’ And: ‘Enjoy today, repeat tomorrow.’

Tipping chicken wings

Restaria De Hoek has been located here since 1985, a corner at the beginning of the Eindhoven nightlife street Stratumseind ​​– or at the end, it just depends on which side you come from. It’s one of those buzzy places that has become a household name over time, closing on weekends just as late as most cafes on the street: at four in the morning. Here everyone gathers who have not had enough, or have had too much. “Always good when you’ve had a good drink,” says a telling Google review.

De Hoek is a size larger than the average snack bar, with furniture bolted to the floor, small TVs that silently play video clips, bright ceiling lighting, a clunky ATM machine, toilets with an unrelenting toilet attendant and a long counter that sells pizzas, fries and chips tonight. , hairdressing salons and döner rolls are being prepared. Every so often, one of the employees dumps a new batch of fried chicken wings into a warming display case.

It is a five-star restaurant for those who want to describe the absurd seriousness of eating after going out and leave the food itself out of consideration – although there is nothing wrong with the thick fries that De Hoek bakes, that has to be said. If you look at the matter soberly, with an amateur anthropological sense to see more in the tipsy figures who simply satisfy their hunger here, then you can get it too.

See De Hoek as a ‘theatre of eating’ – based on the Theater of Cruelty by the French stage innovator Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). In the 1930s, he wrote a series of essays and manifestos in which he proposes a new kind of theater that radically breaks with the classic play of an actor reading a text on stage in front of a watching audience. From now on, spectators had to be immersed in a sensory total experience, back to the pure primordial feelings. Theater – read: eating after going out – should be dangerous, preferably as dangerous as the plague.

Artaud’s theater is seen by critics as ‘impossible theatre’ – that is how people always fall into theorizing in the end. Moreover, they felt that the comparison with the plague was somewhat exaggerated. If only the critics had been in De Hoek this Saturday evening, shortly after the world was in lockdown for two years.

Lower jaw like a harmonica

An hour or two before the silent spitting scene, the same young woman with long curly hair sits at another table. While she and the friend next to her rest their heads on the table top against the dizziness, a sweaty man loudly asks if everything is okay. His lower jaw slides like a harmonica, meanwhile he peers with difficulty through his upper eyelids. No reaction.

Next to the women, an older couple is quietly working through a table full of snacks and fries. The man sometimes looks up from his bowl to see how the flag is hanging with the neighbors. Just as he takes his eyes off them, a load of vomit clatters next to his shoes. His partner calmly stands up, warns an employee and takes his seat again. Not much later, a change of scenery takes place and a new noisy company moves in, as if nothing to spoil the appetite had never happened.

“You just have to feel like helping all those drunk people.” A 22-year-old man from Weert expresses his admiration for the staff of De Hoek. He is there with two friends, who also see an honorable task in running a cafeteria where everything and everyone is sucked into the night. According to them, De Hoek is the Eindhoven variant of ‘their’ own local snack bar Jimmy’s, ‘also such a cultural center’, although they have often seen it degenerate into ‘even more chaos’ there.

They went to Dagcollege today, a techno festival in Het Klokgebouw, and are happy that they are finally seated. One of them kept a record of the time he took pieces of ecstasy pills in his note-taking app until mid-evening, which explains that he just ordered a Coke. He reads: ‘15.25 half, 16.11 half, 16.30 quarter, 17.02 quarter, 17.30 half, 18.00 half, 18.30 quarter, 18.50 quarter, 20.10 half. I know how that goes, if I eat fries now, it doesn’t taste like anything.’

flying chicken wings

There’s Alex in his thirties, who repairs wind turbines in his daily life and sees De Hoek as a genuine A-location for a low-threshold conversation with a stranger. How often do you actually get to talk to a completely different type in a bar or club?

He also likes oiliness very much, emphasizes his girlfriend. ‘I gave him a T-shirt that read: roses are red, violets are bluefrikandel special, I love you† “I love it, yes,” Alex says. He’s going to exercise in the morning. “I’ll tell you honestly, a frikandel is the best fuel you can have.” He eats at least three a week.

“There’s always something crazy going on here,” Alex continues. ‘All the time. If you don’t experience anything, then you haven’t been paying attention.’ As he says it, a man standing in his chair throws him a piece of chicken. The chicken wing ends on the greasy tiles. ‘Do you want? No, seriously, I ordered way too much. How old are you?’

The table vomited under is still a central point of attention and entertainment for a while. Look, there comes someone who realizes just in time that she better find another place. ‘I would have laughed my ass off if she had sat there’, shouts a boy with a roguish look.

Then an elderly gentleman who is peddling through the place on Crocs to clear up leftover food, wipes the table with a jumbo-sized paper towel and an unbothered look. No sooner has he finished than a new customer unsuspectingly accepts his mayo fries. Meanwhile, someone is spreading a frikandel with the sole of his foot that the frikandellen swayer has at last tossed into the aisle. The man on Crocs turns a quarter turn and wipes in one go.

In the dinner-after-dinner spectacle, he symbolizes the constant refreshment of filth and eagerness – impossible theater for a diligent cleaner who started his working day in a neatly tidy snack bar. Or quickly take off those amateur anthropological glasses and just see it for what it is: a pigsty during or after the ball. A glance at the wall offers everyone the necessary perspective: ‘Pure is better than perfect.’