A couple of weeks ago, before my baby sister Christine went back to school, I spent a girls evening in the city with my mom and sisters. And as anyone knows, no girls night is complete without shopping and eating. So that’s what we did.
Since there was a lot of ground to cover, we decided to space out our eating by doing a basic taste test of a few different spots. After a not-so-quick trip to Nordstrom Rack in Union Square, first up was a stop at Otto for some pizza and a cheese platter decked out with truffled honey; the latter of which being worthy of a spot on my own personal Best Thing I Ever Ate list. As I detailed in this post, Otto is famous for their authentic pizza and their prime Village location. And how does one follow up artisinal pizza? Well, with delicious, homemade fries of course.
Enter Pommes Frites. This blink-and-you-miss-it authentic Belgian French fry shop in the East Village serves up fresh from the fryer potato wedges sprinkled with salt and alongside a laundry list of accoutrements. With Jersey Shore-style malt vinegar, 12 mayo varietals, curreid ketchup and melted cheese, there's a little something for every palette. We went with an order of malt vinegar (Mom's pick), cheddar cheese (my pick), blue cheese (Christine's pick) and traditional mayo (Kimberly's pick). Though Shaun and the mayo gods will probably shun me for this, my winning pick goes to the blue cheese. Yum.
Though the four of us managed to put away two regular sized Pommes Frites bags while accruing third degree burns inside our mouths, I must admit that while delicious, these fries were just not up to snuff compared to my favorite thin-cut variety. For the ultimate fry, and more of a French-style pommes frites if you will, I prefer Balthazar in SoHo or Hoboken's Elysian Cafe. The French-style is, after all, reminiscent of our trip to Paris in 2006 where we admittedly indulged in classic pommes frites with mayonnaise dressing (not standard, thick mayo as served at Pommes Frites and any other American place for that matter) anytime the opportunity presented itself.
But Pommes Frites as a stand alone potato wedge? Color me mouthwatered.