In 2018 InStock started delivering surplus food to other restaurants. Van Nimwegen's priority now is to get contracts to supply corporate cafeterias. "The most important thing for us is to make volume," she said. "These kinds of places have a thousand people that need lunch." The Dutch have managed to decrease food waste by 29 percent since 2010, according to a government report, even more than the British.

Dessert was a fabulous foam of berries and cherries poached in red wine, from bottles open too long at the bar. The bill came in a toy shopping cart filled with misshapen fruit: a flat peach and a very skinny pear. I pocketed them to supplement the lunches I'd be rescuing from the breakfast buffet and, feeling a pleasant combination of woke and well-fed, cycled back to my hotel through the misty Amsterdam night.