Phil Pugliese writes:

> In your country, what do you call the things that we yanks call 'potato chips' or just 'chips'?

Doing some catchup (not ketchup/catsup, ha, ha) here...

In Belgium, which invented them, they'd be called "frites" (pronounced "freets"
in American). However, these are very different from American fast food fries. They
use a) a completely different type of potato; b) they are cut fresh from real
live spuds, not powdered and reformed; c) they are deep-fried in beef tallow, not
canola oil; and d) they are double-fried. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friterie
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_fries for more details.

A frites stand / frituur / friterie is a cultural entity in Belgium. These can range
from a restaurant to a store-front to a small stand-alone caravan (not an RV, more
like a food truck although they tend to be towed, not self-propelled).

The existence of one in a village gives it some sort of local recognition. When I
lived there, the teeny-tiny little village I lived in had three churches, a bar,
a brothel, and a friterie. The friterie was important - I guess it promoted the
place from a hamlet to a village :-)

Friteries serve more than just frites: see the wikipedia entry for details.

Here's a pointer to a place in New York City with a pretty respectable sauce menu:
https://www.pommesfritesnyc.com/menu

I note that they do *not* offer 'sauce Americain', and if you *are* American, you
might not want to try this in Belgium... at least not first off. I recall it as
being basically tomato ketchup made almost solid with horseradish and black pepper.
However, the web now reports that it's made of 'onions, tomatoes, white wine, a little
cognac, salt, cayenne pepper and butter'. Hmmm.

Additionally, in the UK and the Commonwealth, fish'n'chips are also very cultural.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_and_chip_shop for some details.

Lots of Travelleresque colour potential here, one might think. 'Sauce Fred' on planet X,
a special favourite of the crew there, is rather different on new planet Y, and leads
to stomach upset, headaches, and whatnot. Of course these symptoms crop up 24 hours
later, when they are in Jump... Frites on planet A are pronounced Frights on planet B,
freets being something completely different. And so on.

Jonathan