A row has broken out between Amsterdam and Rotterdam snack providers over who invented the kapsalon, a fast food concoction built up of chips, meat, melted cheese and lettuce.

The dispute started when an Amsterdam snack bar on Overtoom put out a sign advertising the kapsalon as an ‘Amsterdam speciality Real Kapsalon’, according to the Parool.

A typical case of Amsterdam hubris,’ professor of urban history Paul van de Laar told het Parool. Van Laar has proclaimed the snack part of the ‘Rotterdam cultural heritage of the future’ as early as eight years ago and it is enshrined as such at the Rotterdam Museum.

‘We embrace the kapsalon as our cultural heritage and we should be proud of it. If this goes on we may have to turn to a tv judge for a verdict but I know what he will say. Amsterdam won’t stand a chance.’

At El Aviva, the Rotterdam fast food joint where the kapsalon was invented in 2003, staff are up in arms but owner Dervis Bengü told the paper there is not much he can do. ‘It is pathetic,’ he commented. ‘I am really disgusted but what can I do. I didn’t patent the kapsalon.(..) But everybody knows we invented it.’

The Amsterdam snack bar owner meanwhile told AT5 he didn’t know the snack was originally conceived in Rotterdam. ‘Lots of snack bars are promoting it as a speciality from Amsterdam. But perhaps we should say: the kapsalon was invented in Rotterdam but in Amsterdam we make a better one.’

The name of the snack goes back to the when the owner of a hairdressing salon in Rotterdam had a dish made up of all his favourite ingredients at El Aviva.

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