Vleminckx Sausmeesters

Amsterdam's fries window since 1957; the queue moves faster than your sauce decision.

The queue starts before the shutters are fully up and it has not really stopped since 1957. Vleminckx is a hole in the wall on Voetboogstraat that does exactly one thing: proper Flemish fries, cut thick, fried twice, salted like they mean it. The menu is a wall of 25-odd sauces and the correct answer is oorlog, a glorious mess of mayo, satay sauce and raw onions that ruins you for tidy food forever. Nobody is here for comfort. You shuffle forward with students, market traders and the occasional chef on a break, order in ten seconds, then eat standing in the alley with a tiny plastic fork. The fries hold their crunch to the bottom of the cone, which is the whole test. Budget ten minutes on a weekday, half an hour on Saturday, regret zero.

Medium fries, oorlog, double onions

Photo: Nick Sherman (Flickr, CC)