As a child, I was well aware that Belgium’s love affair with chips – or fries, if you are American – eclipsed even its famed passion for chocolate and beer. That impression proved true when I moved here from France. “French” fries – an appellation we’ll revisit – are etched deep into the Belgian psyche, not merely as food but as a form of street-corner communion. The average Belgian family consumes 16kg of fries a year.
The country’s ubiquitous fritkots (or frietkots or friteries or fritures or frituurs) – local chip shops – are cultural institutions in their own right. Democratic and egalitarian, they attract patrons from all walks of life. The interlude between order and pick-up, as fries hiss in beef fat at 170°C, becomes a moment of connection: between customers and the frymaster behind the counter.
In recognition of its cultural importance, ‘Fritkot Culture’ was declared Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO World Heritage in all three Belgian communities – Flemish, Walloon and German-speaking – between 2014 and 2017.
Illustration picture taken during the opening of the Belgiqn fries museum, in Brussels, Monday 28 April 2025. Credit: Belga / Eric Lalmand
Enthusiasts began documenting the phenomenon as early as 1998 with a webzine, frites.be. It was followed by an exhibition in Forest featuring Belgian painter Gilles Houben, who specialised in picturing fritkots, and the creation of the Micro Musée de la Frite, which still hosts over 900 fry-related curios.
In 2008, food entrepreneur Eddy Van Belle – who had founded Brussels' Choco-Story and Bruges’ Lumina Domestica (Bruges’ lamp museum) – added another culinary shrine to his portfolio: the Frietmuseum in Bruges. Dreamt up over a plate of steak-frites, it opened in the city’s oldest building, dating from 1399, and now attracts around 90,000 visitors annually.
After spending a decade and a half spawning Choco-Story museums across the world, Van Belle returned to his potato passion this year, opening a second fries museum, the Frietmuseum, in Brussels, just off Rue de l’Étuve and within sniffing distance of Manneken Pis. It opened its doors in May after two years of work.
Deep-fried zeitgeist
With 1,645 objects on display, the Frietmuseum revels in its crisp and quirky subject matter. It is not short of traditions, local folklore and anecdotes showing how much French fries are tightly related to the essence of Belgian culture. It celebrates the ‘mirror image’ of Belgian essence through the paraphernalia surrounding fries. Interactive exhibits include a jukebox of fry-themed songs in both Flemish and French.
A collection of serving cones and miniature forks illustrates the Belgian obsession with the perfect bite (purists say you should only eat fries with the fingers).
Illustration picture taken during the opening of the Belgiqn fries museum, in Brussels, Monday 28 April 2025. Credit: Belga
Some exhibits border on the surreal. One video captures a musical ensemble playing instruments fashioned from fry-making equipment. In another anecdote, a local radio station launched a cone of fries into the stratosphere – retrieved intact 30km from Brussels after a two-hour journey after rising 37km in altitude. A special sauce, ‘16-20’, was created by Brussels Ketjep to commemorate the event. It remains on sale to this day.
There are comic strips, artworks, and artefacts galore, all paying tribute to Belgium’s golden sticks. Through humour, surrealism, conviviality, and a touch of irreverence, the museum distils the Belgian soul.
Belgian or French? A slippery slope
National pride often finds its footing in unexpected places. Belgium and France have long sparred over cultural ownership – Jacques Brel and Johnny Hallyday among the most disputed figures – and fries are no exception.
The Americans haven’t helped, coining the term “French fries.” A video in the museum explains how US soldiers stationed in French-speaking Belgium during World War I confused the country for France.
But University of Liège food historian Pierre Leclercq traces the term to “French fried potatoes,” documented as early as 1857, and shortened by 1903. American Lexicographer Stuart Berg Flexner suggests the term ‘fries’ gained traction in the US from the 1920s to the ’60s.
So, who invented the fry? The Bruges Frietmuseum recounts a tale from the Meuse valley, where 17th century fishermen, stymied by frozen rivers, sliced and fried potatoes as a substitute for fish. This legend remains hotly contested: it is traced to a manuscript dating from 1781, discovered by Belgian historian Jo Gérard, but it later turned out that this but it later refers to fine slices of potatoes fried in fat, which were eaten in many parts of Europe.
Friturst baking frites at 'Villa de Frit', in Bonheiden, Tuesday 01 December 2020. Credit: Belga
According to Leclercq, the first fries likely emerged in early 19th century Paris, popularised by doughnut vendors on the Pont Neuf. The point is driven home the museum, where a side-by-side display at the museum compares an 1851 French cookbook, La cuisinière de la campagne et de la ville, that says, “You cut your raw potatoes into slices…” with the 1861 text, L’économie culinaire by Belgian chef Edouard Cauderlier, prescribing in its recipe on fat-fried potatoes to “cut potatoes into slices or sticks.”
Yet even Leclercq concedes this is not definitive. The characteristic stick form of fries seems to have appeared in Paris by 1840 at the latest. They were imported into Belgium by a Bavarian immigrant, Frederik Krieger, who learnt how to cook them in Montmartre in 1842. He settled in Belgium two years later, selling ‘Paris-like’ fried potatoes and making a fortune. Belgians then adopted the fries and incorporated them into their gastronomic culture, associating them with mussels, mayonnaise and generalising double cooking. Belgians “confuse culture and origin, which leads to an anachronism, a common mistake in the history of food,” Leclercq concludes.
Culinary icon
Despite the debate, the museum leaves no doubt about the centrality of fries to Belgian life. Alongside classics like vol-au-vent and carbonade flamande/stoofvlees, the Frietmuseum pays tribute to the infamously indulgent mitraillette – a baguette stuffed with meat (merguez, steak or even lamb flakes) onions, sauce, and, of course, fries. A giant sculpture of it captures the chaotic glory of this carbohydrate torpedo: Belgians have a reputed steel-plated stomach to put fries into a bread sandwich!
Educational elements abound. The museum explains potato cultivation, showcases species like the much-lauded Bintje, and displays fry-related tools to cut, peel, cook, sample and measure. It also shows all the variants of standard fries (10 to 13mm thick sticks), from crisps to matchsticks, as well as displays on sauces, mustard and salt. There are audio guides in 11 languages and trilingual labels throughout.
And yes, the €14 adult admission price includes a cone of perfectly fried potatoes. Visitors can savour it beside a replica of a Brussels fountain – one final wink to a nation that wears its absurdities, and its fries, with pride.
