> Moving here from London was a shock: I thought London was one of the better places for vegetarian food, I wasn’t prepared for the huge selection of vegan alternatives in everyday Dutch supermarkets

They are often the source for lots of Asian ingredients in mainland Europe, while I was in the UK we sourced lots of things like umeboshi and miso from Holland; to my surprise being from CA with lots of access to Japanese/Chinese/Korean ingredients I found lots of the Dutch stuff to be really good.

I'm not sure if that has to do their with relationship (and desire for it's food) with Japan during the isolation period, but there were lots of Japanese products in a biodyanmic farm/shop I worked at in Germany too.

Sadly, it was rather limited in scope because they are the main exporters of conventional food in the EU for a reason.