Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Pommes Frites Part 1: NYC

This post has been a long time a comin but it is finally here.  Two weekends ago I took a trip down to a place that is proclaimed to be on of the best Frites based locations in Brussels.  Near this time one of the readers: Lauren, thought she would help me out and compare them to "Belgian Frites" in New York.  This will be a 2 Part post:  Today I'll put up Laurens post and some photos and tomorrow I'll put up mine.

From Lauren:

After a disappointing inability to locate the Belgian Room (apparently it's address was listed incorrectly online but I still think it is gone) on Friday night we returned to 2nd Ave on Saturday afternoon to indulge our taste buds in some double fried wedges of potatoes at Pommes Frites. Since it was nice out we were already in a good mood and rode our bikes over from Brooklyn so we worked up a bit of an appetite. At around 2pm the line was already out the door. This little shop is usually pretty busy but we didn't expect to see much of a crowd since we usually see everyone show up 
here after a night of drinking. They have a menu set up on the outside of the shop which is convenient to figure out which sauces you want before squishing inside. We chose the Rosemary Garlic, Sweet Mango, and Curry Ketchup sauces. There are three sizes: Regular ($4.50), Large ($6.25), and Double ($7.75). Justin and I ordered a double (which we later realized we didn't need) and Viren and Mike shared a large. It's important to point out that our frites were not from the same batch. Inside the shop they have a bar with holes cut into it to hold your paper cone of frites. Since it was crowded and the weather was nice we sat on the steps of a church across the street to eat our pommes frites. Although this caused us to miss the experience of utilizing the paper cone holding contraption it did put us in a pleasurable mood. The fries were super hot and steaming since they were just pulled out of the fryer. The frites were pretty decent chunks of potato and they seemed nice and crispy from looking at them but they weren't as crispy as they should have been. Viren and Michael's batch were the right crispiness, perhaps our batch was only single fried? Justin forgot to order the Curry Ketchup so now we only had the Rosemary Garlic and the Sweet Mango sauces. The sauces were good but I can't help but think we missed out on something by not just having a regular mayonnaise and ketchup mix. Even though our batch wasn't crispy, they were still delicious. I like to pretend that the bigger the potato chunks are the less unhealthy they are for you because the insides haven't been totally reached by the frying. I'm sure that it seeps all the way through but it feels better to be ignorant on this topic. We ate every Pommes Frite, even the
 shriveled up ones on the bottom that look like they have been through the fryer 6 times. As expected they were a little greasy (as you can see from the photograph I sent along). I would say they are definitely better than your normal fries. I still wish we just got normal European mayo and ketchup though. I feel like we tried to dress them up too much with these other sauces. Plus ketchup and mayo are free while the sauces are $1.00 each, and in a floundering economy who can afford fancy sauce? We'll be on the streets in a week.


WELL, I've been to Pommes Frites in NYC and I remember the sauces were really good.  I will say this... I think its bad form to use ketchup here... pure mayo is the way to go.  BUT, I'll save the real info for tomorrow when I publish my own Frites based experience.  I hope we'll get some more people to go out and find Belgian things and let me know how they end up in the US.

4 comments:

  1. When I look at the Blog Archive I'm pretty impressed by the amount of posts you had in the month of February.

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  2. Even for NYC, those prices seem outrageous. I don't care what you call them- we're talking about deep fried potato wedges. Then again, the bars near Yahkee Stadium have the nerve to charge $7.50 for light beer...

    kisses,

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  3. I agree with ehnonohmus, but still regret not being able to go with these guys. The fry pic makes me salivate.

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  4. The price is absolutely outrageous. Then again, you have to compare the inflated cost of the Pommes Frites in Belgium. You need to add the $300 cost of the flight to Belgium. That makes for expensive Frites.

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