Bake Them Then! (If You Can)

As a fry fan, food editor at large Marjan Ippel thinks it’s only right that fries are in the spotlight. But as a fried-potato fan, she’s getting a little disheartened. How much longer before the forgotten art of frying potatoes is rehabilitated?

As a lifelong fry fan, you won’t hear me complain that fries are now so respectable that even Michelin-starred chefs want to be seen with them. And that after this dish of dishes was ignored for years on the serious restaurant plate.

Crust, Crumb, Butter, Salt

But as a fried-potato fan, I find it incomprehensible that there is no room on that same restaurant plate for the ultimate mix of salt, crumb and, above all, crust that is the fried potato. A crust that makes every French fry—however good—pale in comparison. Thanks to the butter. Although frying in goose fat or beef dripping is also hard to beat. And even oil will do. Or ghee.

Bratkartoffel

But try finding them in the Netherlands. While in Germany, at every gutbürgerlich restaurant or Biergarten, the Bratkartoffel gets the place on the menu it deserves—namely, everywhere—in our country it is conspicuously absent when eating out.

Since we all started having American-style breakfasts here at the weekend, you sometimes see a pile of hash browns on the breakfast plate among the fried chicken and waffles. And at classics such as Van der Valk, the fried potato also has a permanent place alongside the applesauce with cherry and peas. And that’s nice.

Why don’t chefs actually like fried potatoes?

But why don’t less-classic chefs like this versatile hero? Why fries but not fried potatoes?

Geometric

I suspect it’s because fries still lend themselves reasonably well to the geometric arrangements that fit the stripes, smears and dots that have dominated the restaurant plate for years now.

Whereas the fried potato is what it is: unruly, unadapted and impossible to control in shape. Because no, mirror-smooth oven-baked potato wedges do not deserve to bear the hallowed name. Nor do the perfectly good Spanish batatas bravas.

Or is it because we Dutch—in contrast to Belgians—generally get our fries outside the home according to tradition, while the fried potato belongs in the domain of the housewife? As far as I know, the first fried-potato stall or truck has yet to open. Even though every chef names his or her (grand)mother as their greatest source of inspiration, putting a home-cooked dish on the menu usually goes too far.

Fuckin’ Difficult

It surely can’t be because frying potatoes is simply “fuckin’ difficult,” to quote fry vendor Sergio Herman?

And yet, alongside all the rugged festival meat, it would do wonderfully. On Instagram too, which has an enormous crush on fries.

Rijsel

Is there really no hope at all? Yes, there is: like modern-day Asterixes, restaurants such as Amsterdam’s Rijsel serve a magnificent classic fried potato. So creamy and crusty at the same time that, no matter how much you get, it’s always too little.

Really, it’s time for a comeback.

You can fry potatoes too. With this recipe from Iwan Driessen of restaurant Rijsel.

Text: Marjan Ippel
Image: Shutterstock