Quietly staking its Granville Street claim for number one drunk food is Fritz European Fry House.
Pizza still reigns supreme in the midnight hours, but Fritzs fries poutined, popped or dipped are the late-night snack with class. Nineteen pillowy dips, from garlic mayo to mango chutney, catch the fries as they drunkenly spill from their crackly paper cone.
The potatoes may be Canadian, but the hand-cut, Belgian-style fries are so fresh they speak with an accent, and the poutine rich, dark gravy layered with squeaky cheese curd so that each individual fry is smothered is delicious down to the last bite.
At this tiny fry house, with service until 3 and 4am and a discrete lack of tables, comfort food for the coming cold months is taken to go.
How can you not love Fritz when youre craving something on those late nights? raves one customer. Its worth standing in line for, and sometimes battling your way through to get that delicious cheesy-poutine-covered-in-gravy goodness.
Whether you call them fries, franskar, patati, fritten, chips, or pommes frites, in Vancouver people say Fritz.
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FUN FACTS ABOUT POTATOES:
Discovered by the Spanish when they invaded Peru in 1532, potatoes, were brought to Spain by Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada in 1565, and by 1600 had spread throughout Europe.
Pomme frites (fried potatoes) first appeared in Paris in the 1840s. They were immediately popular, and were sold on the streets of Paris by push-cart vendors.
The French excluded potatoes from their tables until 1780, because they were thought to cause leprosy.
In Scotland, devout Presbyterians initially refused to eat them because they werent mentioned in the Bible.
Prussian farmers thought potatoes to be poisonous due to their similarities with the nightshade family, until King Frederick William I threatened to cut of the nose of anyone who declined to plant and eat them.
