Proef: style over substance?

Please note that since writing this blog post, Proef Amsterdam has closed down

‘Eating design’ is the concept that designer Marije Vogelzang seeks to showcase at Proef Amsterdam. One of Proef’s projects is its ‘Eat Love’ dinners: a summer-only outdoor dining experience in the Westerpark. I’d seen the website and got excited (although I’d love to re-write the English text) and booked myself in for some eat loving. I was intrigued…

But now – after the event – I’m not really sure where to start. I was absolutely blown away by the experience, thought of all sorts of things I wanted to say about it, and now can’t figure out how to put them into words logically. I almost feel like I need to change the way I write about food in order to capture accurately the altered way in which I perceived it – sensed it, interacted with it – at Proef. Failing this kind of creative eureka moment, here are some photos of our experience (unfortunately taken on my rubbish phone) and some of my thoughts about it…

‘Je suis votre corsage’ reads the label that sticks the flowers to the glass. It might not have been in French, but it felt like it was. Must be the connection with marriage, the language of love, etc. I sit in nature, sipping, waiting, wondering how much I use food as a substitute.

In a typically ironic strike from the universe, pre-dinner amuse bouche is announced as ‘lust-inducing’. Having recently renounced lust (long story), my bouche may have been amused but my brain was not. I take two from long sticks emerging from the ground, trailing coloured streamers. One hot and sweet, the other creamy and textured. Bright orange petals adorn and attract, like a peacock’s mating ritual. Gentle cruelty.

Ironic, that, seeing as it’s the photosynthesis tree. But don’t all trees photosynthesize? And aren’t all trees wooden? This one has wooden leaves too, and light bulbs instead of flowers. It cooks tiny pieces of flavoured pastry that we dip in a dill-minty, cream-cheesy concoction. It takes time. We watch, mesmerised.

His and hers. Half and half. I get the sweet melon; he gets the salty prosciutto; we get the idea. A bit more gentle cruelty. It’s at this point that I wonder whether Proef is style over substance. I mean, melon and prosciutto? I decide to suspend judgement.

How could this much food be white? Is it funereal, innocent, unadulterated? It prompts a discussion of the ‘blind restaurant’ – ctaste, which I hated. Perhaps its whiteness leaves the senses as baffled as to what we should taste as did the darkness. I diligently write a list of everything on the table, which now feels strangely inadequate.

Odd how fluorescent colours juxtapose with the natural environment (a herb and vegetable garden, in fact) in which we’re sitting. A grenade and a hammer sit anticipatorily in front of us: violence masking sugar and spice and all things nice. The male/female thing again (or maybe it’s just on the brain). It invites me to break it. I bruise it gently. It still cracks. Chilli, thyme and cinnamon waft out of the apple’s clay shell – simple and homely with three types of accompaniment: goat’s milk ice cream, whipped cream with honey, and lime mascarpone. Three aromatics with three dairy. Symmetrical. Constructive destruction.

We wander through the Westerpark and I consider again my earlier question of style over substance. I can’t answer it. But for once it doesn’t matter: with style like this – style that challenges expectations, style that enables a plurality of interaction with food, style that stimulates sensation – I can draw only one conclusion. Here, style is substance.