Few things combine as well with a good glass of beer as a handful of peanuts. So not long after we transformed the old bathhouse into a brewery, we headed to the market around the corner: the Dappermarkt. We were lucky to find André there. André had been around for a while. His parents used to sell shoes at the same market, but André switched to nuts and decided to fry them on the spot. The smell, spreading over the market lured plenty of customers and André’s nuts have been in demand ever since.
But it wasn’t only the smell, André explains. “We fry our nuts in their own oil. So we fry our peanuts in peanut oil too.” Why? “Because you fry them in their own oil, they soak in their own taste.” The result? “A nut like this, it just smiles at you.”
Up until a few years ago, André still used to carry in the buckets full of freshly fried peanuts to our tasting room himself. But, after fifty years of hard labour, he decided to hand over his responsibilities and so now his daughter, Manon, runs what has steadily grown into a regional nut empire and renamed it Let’s Get Nuts. André’s grandson Kees is in charge of the different stalls, including the one at the Dappermarkt, whereas Kees’ brother Sam organizes a lot behind the scenes. “Quite unique actually”, André realizes, “how it just keeps running like that.”
To Kees it made perfect sense to continue in his grandfather’s steps. He grew up amidst nuts and peanuts. “It’s all you know.” You know exactly what you sell, he means to say. “We don’t want sound arrogant”, he says, “but that’s what it is.” His grandfather is more assertive in his claims: “We taught the people how to eat nuts.”
The peanuts this family enterprise delivers at our tasting room come from Argentina. “They stay oilier”, Kees explains. “That makes the salt stick better.” André used to deliver our peanuts of choice himself. “I always liked the team, the vibe, felt welcome right away.” But before delivery, he would ensure that crispy bite by frying our peanuts in their very own oil. “That, together with the salt”, Kees beams, “a beer next to it: all you need.”
Want to nibble on these tasty Argentinian peanuts outside our tasting room as well? Let’s Get Nuts has a stall quite close to us, two actually. Cross the street, enter the Dappermarkt and you will find them there.
