The Tour with fries and mayo
BRUSSELS — For diehard fans in cyclingmad Belgium, only one thing beats watching the Tour de France: Watching cycling’s greatest race while also munching on fries slathered in mayo.
And don’t make the mistake of calling them “French fries.”
Because in Belgium, the country that gifted the great Eddy Merckx to cycling and where the race started Saturday, chopping potatoes into slivers and deepfrying them in fat is practically an art. Woe to those who favor those floury, flavorless, frozen fastfood toothpicks masquerading as fries.
The real things, for Belgian aficionados, are made from fresh potatoes only, doublecooked in beef drippings, and are worth less than Lance Armstrong’s seven dopingfueled Tour victories if they don’t crackle and crunch between the teeth.
“A good fry must, successively, swim, sing and jump,” Belgium’s National Union of Frymakers — yes, there is such an organization — says on its website .
Not that the riders themselves will notice. Watching their diets to keep their weight down and energy levels up, and focused on surviving the grueling threeweek haul through Belgium and France, they’re about to miss out on the rolling gastronomic and cultural feast that is the Tour, as the race barrels through regions heaving with edibles of all kinds.
There’ll be quiches, pates, cakes and snails in the east of France; cheeses, hams and chestnuts in the Massif Central mountains in the middle; bean stews, sausages and yet more cheeses in the south; and don’t forget to leave room in the Alps for — yup, you guessed it — more cheese, plus other mountain delicacies.
Now, back to fries.
Brussels visitors Eliane Paulet and Michel Jacquinet made a beeline for fry shop Fritland, joining the line to buy two heavy cornets of fresh fries, after a joyous ceremony in the city’s Grand Square on Thursday night that feted fivetime Tour winner Merckx and introduced the Tour teams.
She covered her fries with a gooey, spicy “Samurai” sauce; he went for more traditional mayonnaise. Inside, cooks furiously scooped the potato wedges into bubbling fat for a first fry, took them out, cooled them off, and then fried them again for crunch.
Paulet said the secret of good fries is “good oil, beef grease.” She treats herself to a cornet once a month.