Sure, I am Always Talkin’ Food, but I teach NT2 (Dutch as a second language) on the side. Mainly to young foreigners who came to Amsterdam for or with love and intend to stay. For privacy reasons the names in these columns are fictitious.
Windmills? Cheese? Nederwiet? Uh-uh, the most Dutch phenomenon of the moment is de Tikkie. My students marvel at the popularity of this payment request app, massively used here but rather unknown in their own countries.
They suspect that the app which enables you to request a payment from friends and family is even more popular in the Netherlands than TikTok and the fatbike.
'I really had to get used to everyone constantly sending Tikkies,' Aline from Brazil confesses.
'And literally for everything,' the Italian Sophia adds. 'A friend received a one euro Tikkie for a pizza slice she got from a Dutch colleague at lunch. Is that normal if something is given? Should I also expect a Tikkie for the birthday cake a colleague treats me to at work?'
'What are the rules for sending a Tikkie?' Aline is desperate to know.
They’ve got me thinking. Even for me it is always a guessing game when and if a Tikkie is in place.
Seems like we’ve opened Pandora’s box, from which now emerges an incessant stream of questions:
In what circumstances and with whom is sending a Tikkie appropriate? And when is it not? (Sophia)
What do you do if you agreed to send one but simply forgot? How long afterwards can you still send it? (Aline)
What is the expiry date for sending a Tikkie? (me)
Tikkie uncertainties aplenty.
Anxious for answers, my students listen to Dutch podcasts on the phenomenon and interrogate their Dutch in-laws about it, but the ambiguity remains.
’There are also benefits’, I try to give things a positive turn. ‘The Tikkie is a form of democracy, everybody chips in.’
This strikes Sophia as very unromantic: ‘If I got a Tikkie afterwards from my Tinder date, it would definitely be a turn-off for me.’
It doesn’t make it any better when I say that the standard remark "Stuur me ff een Tikkie" (“Send me a Tikkie”) leaves the person who picks up the bill the option to say “I'm buying”.
‘So, if people don’t ask to send them a Tikkie, I am automatically the one to foot the entire bill?’ Aline wants to know. ‘Only because I happen to settle the financial transaction?’
Clearly, this 21st century version of “going Dutch” begs for a Tikkie etiquette.
Food lingo
Pizza slice - de pizzapunt
Birthday cake - de verjaardagstaart
I’m buying/My treat - Ik trakteer
Going Dutch
At Thull’s Deli there’s a big chance you go Dutch, simply because almost everything here is locally made, either by pickling queen Simone Thull herself, or by her Dutch suppliers from nearby. Order a pastrami sandwich, and it will be filled with pastrami by Amsterdam butcher De Wit plus Thull’s own sauerkraut and dill pickles. You can also buy jars of her homemade kimchi and other fermented veggies. And lots more.
Thull’s Deli, Zeedijk 71 Amsterdam (new!). Open: Mon-Sat 11 AM - 7 PM.
C. van Eesterenlaan 21-23 Amsterdam. Open: Mon-Sat 10 AM - 8 PM, Sun 11 AM - 8 PM.