In Belgium, where hot, salty fries smeared with mayonnaise are a national institution, tampering with traditional frites sounds like a recipe for trouble.
However, the capital, Brussels, is giving a futuristic makeover to some of the official stalls where the famous potato delicacies are sold to eager locals and tourists.
Eight nondescript fritkots owned by city authorities will be decked out with dazzling mirrored facades and special lighting.
Photo: AFP
City planners and operators alike say the upgrade will make the stalls — which are due to reopen later next year — as memorably Belgian as the food they sell.
“Without frites Belgium doesn’t exist,” said fritkot operator Vuistema Kemal, whose stall in central Brussels is one of those being upgraded.
He said that chips “represent Belgium around the world.”
Brussels planners launched a competition last year to find a new design for what they call the “Fritkots of the Future.”
“We thought ‘and what if we give a model?’ — a model that is identifiable just like the telephone booths of London,” said Marion Lemesre, a senior economic affairs official for the city of Brussels.
The issue is a serious one in Belgium, whose claim of inventing frites is disputed by France.
Belgium’s fritkots even hit the international headlines when German Chancellor Angela Merkel nipped out to one in the middle of an EU summit in Brussels after Brexit talks went on for too long.
The competition was won in January by Studio Moto, an architecture firm based in Ghent in the northern Dutch-speaking part of Belgium.
Studio Moto owners Mo Vandenberghe and Thomas Hick said their main goal during the design process was to maintain the identity of each individual chip shop.
“People are a bit particular about their fritkots,” Hick said.
He said that the fritkots is “part of Belgian culture, Brussels culture, and replacing them is something sensitive, so we really had [to keep] in mind we couldn’t put something standardized.”
While all the stands will have the mirrored facade and lighting effect, each revamped fritkot is to have two colors unique to the location. One color will be used for the sign on top of the fritkot, and the other will be for the interior tiling.
Brussels has dozens of privately owned and operated fritkots too, but only locations owned by the city of Brussels are set for remodeling, including the fritkot outside the Atomium museum, a key tourist draw, as well as Place de la Chapelle, near the city’s antiques market.
The city will also finance the creation of two new fritkot locations, one of which will be placed at another popular historic landmark, Mont des Arts, in the city center.
Along with beer and chocolate, frites are a rare unifying factor in a young country, founded only in 1830, that has throughout its short history been deeply divided between French and Dutch-speaking communities.
They also play into Belgium’s inferiority complex about France. Belgium claims frites were invented in the southern French-speaking city of Namur, but France lays a rival claim to the invention of what has become known in the US in particular as the French fry.
Kemal, who has operated his stall at Place de la Chapelle for 34 years, said the newly designed stalls will help put Belgium’s frites on the map.
“What is good I think, is to unify all the designs of Belgium, of all fritkots in Brussels,” Kemal said. “So the tourists, the foreigners who come, they can discover it easily.”
The designers said they were working with the individual operators to make sure they work as well in practice as in theory.
“We are not trying to reinvent anything in particular,” Hick said. “We are trying to go back to the basics as much as possible.”
“I see this as a positive sign of renewal for the city,” he said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese