Pomme Frites (Brussels, Belgium, 1989 (picture taken 1997))

When we lived in Brussels, there was a very large, three day a week, market on a square called Stockel, about 25 minutes walk from our house (or you could take the streetcar). The other four days a week, it was largely a parking lot, since the market consisted of vans that traveled around the neighborhoods.

At the North End of the square was kiosk, like there used to be for photo processing at malls in the US, but this one was for french fries. Belgian french fries are famous, and when we lived there we saw why: these were delicious beyond belief. Since Friture Charles was a small stand-alone place (there was a cobbler in the other half of the kiosk), you could see the whole process--sacks of potatoes stacked in the back, a skinning and cutting machine with a big funnel that potatoes were fed into, then two separate frying processes, with the fries taken out and dried between steps. Finally, there was a choice of about 20 sauces, New Orleans Hot Sauce, etc. They were served in a paper cone, like the icon in the name in the picture below. It would have been really easy to gain a lot of weight living near that thing.

[When I had a meeting in Antwerp in 1997, Elizabeth and I visited the old neighborhood and took the picture below. Here is a link to another really nice picture from last year, that I found on Flickr.]


Place Stockel (Stokkelplein in Flemish), snarfed from Google Maps, on a market day. Note the vans with the shops inside, and on the North end, Friture Charles.