Our Inaugeral Visit to Die Spens

Aweh, guys!

When I first arrived in the Netherlands, it was my mission to find proper salt and vinegar chips.

My one true love

When I was a wee lass, my parents would take us to the rec club in the tiny mining village, where we lived, and eventually would emerge with a coke and a blue packet of Simba chips for me and my sister… they were my favourite. They remind me of my childhood and throughout the years other chips have tried to woo me with a salty sour combination (here’s looking at you Simba fruit chutney) and I vowed to find a replacement.

Unfortunately, nothing has come close and I’ve done the leg work. People tried to give me alternatives like Walkers and Lays salt and vinegar but you just don’t get them readily off the shelves here. I’ve also tried the Albert Heijn salt and balsamic which doesn’t carry that same acidic punch, Pringles which are mad expensive and don’t have the right texture (even though the taste is similar) and Kettle Chips which were also balsamic based. I needed something to take my breath away with the correct wavy crunch…

Luckily, my hubby doesn’t like to watch his wifey suffer and he proposed a visit to Die Spens in Amersfoort. They are a South African goods importer with a store front selling important touchstones like biltong, Savanna, creme soda, peppermint crisp and Oros… They also had notable British brands mainly in the form of Cadbury’s and biscuits.

More importantly, they had boerewors, koeksusters and Stoney ginger beer, the latter I drank on the drive home. It was pretty reasonably priced if you consider cost of import, mark up and distribution. It was around 16 euro for 500g of wors, twelve koeksusters, two packs of Simba and a lone can of Stoney. I couldn’t even wait to get home to taste the kwetsa!

The boerewors and koeksusters were frozen but thawed up a treat in this heatwave (it’s been 39 degrees for the past two days – that is not a typo) and we enjoyed them with Napoleon brandy and coke. We also sampled the much lauded Simba and either I’ve lost my immunity, or they have become super strong because they nearly punched my lights out… brava!

I understand that it is important to adapt to your environment, but food is a way to anchor yourself to that environment. If you can get items that remind you of home, I don’t see any harm in that… especially since Die Spens does home delivery via PostNL and they don’t cost an arm and a leg. They also aren’t too far from Woerden!