Eat fries like the Dutch!

Patat or Friet?

The Dutch love their fries. Now here’s a fun fact. Do you know that every Dutch consume about 18 kg of frozen potatoes products per year? In the Northern provinces of The Netherlands, they call it Patat and in the south, they call it Friet. In Singapore, we lovingly call these as fries 🙂

The last time I had the Dutch-style fries was in Amsterdam. I could understand why it is comfort food for the Dutch. The fries are usually so much thicker and chunkier than the common shoestring fries served in Singapore.

The fries are served piping hot, with a generous amount of sauces drizzling over it. It’s nice to have it as a mid-day snack during winter time because it’s one of those things which could keep you warm and snuggly inside.

Holland Fries in Singapore’s Holland Village

Living in a cosmopolitan city like Singapore, we are fortunate enough to try a variety of food from various parts of the world – that includes Dutch fries! Yes, we get to taste Martin Zwerts’ fries here in Singapore at Holland Village. As you would have guessed it, Holland Village was where the Dutch community in Singapore once lived.

Friture Martin Zwerts is a Dutch family establishment which had started since 1948. Today, it is widely recognised as one of the best fries shops in the Netherlands for eight consecutive years.

In fact, this is their first flagship store outside of Europe. Like you, I’m excited about trying these fries.

The Menu

Currently, they served fries in cones, and there are two cone sizes – small (starting from $5.50) and large (starting from $6.50). If you wish to enjoy your fries with their variety of sauces, you would have to pay an extra dollar for it.

Their menu also features other small bites like onion rings and meatballs. In addition, there are set meals for those who wish to have a proper meal along with their signature fries. You can order a canned drinks to go along with your meal too.

How they prepare their fries?

Their fries are made from Holland potatoes which imported from Holland (duh). Each batch of fries is fried twice to give the fries that crispy golden texture. After frying, they would season the fries with some salt.

Also, the thick-cut fries are served piping hot so you might want to use a fork or a wooden pick.

Our Recommendations

With so many sauces to choose from, what should you opt for? We’ve tested it so that you don’t have fret over which sauces to pick. Here are our three recommended sauces:

1. Frite Sauce

This is the Dutch version of mayonnaise which is slightly lower in fat as compared to regular mayonnaise. (Probably, one of the reasons why the Dutch aren’t fat.)

It’s light and not too overly savoury like the regular mayonnaise. The frite sauce is like the most basic sauce to go with these Dutch fries. They even use it as a base to mix and match with other sauces.

2. MZ Special (highly-recommended)

This special sauce is a mixture of frite and Kerrie sauce, topped with onions. Kerrie is ‘curry’ in Dutch. However, the Dutch version of curry is different from the Asian-style curries we have in Singapore. It is similar to the milder version of Japanese curry – which is sweet and spicy at the same time.

When mixed with the frite sauce, the Kerrie sauce creams up into this curry-looking sauce. It goes perfectly with the chopped par-cooked onions. Thankfully, the onions do not have that raw taste which could potentially make your mouth stink.

If you wish to skip the frite sauce, you can opt for their Kerrie sauce with onions.

3. Frite with Tomato and Basil sauce

Because the tomato and basil sauce is homemade, it has this freshly-made taste. It’s light and very refreshing. This is that not-so-sinful kind of sauce.

Other Sauces

Like many others, we were intrigued with the not-so-common sauces like Joppi and Sate sauce. For the adventurous souls, here’s a low-down of what these sauces taste like.

Joppi Sauce (Dutch Sauce)

This sauce is for the adventurous and those who just wanted to try something new. This is a Dutch snack sauce which is usually eaten with fast food. It contains curry, onion and other secret ingredients which no one knows except for the company that produces it.

To me, it tasted like salad sauce. Salad sauce with fries? It’s not my thing but my partner likes it.

Sate sauce

Initially, we thought that this sauce was inspired by our local Satay sauce, which is also a type of peanut sauce that we pair with meat. It is a Dutch version of peanut sauce which contains mayonnaise and peanut butter. It is on the sweeter side, which is different from our Asian version of satay sauce which has soy sauce, onions and garlic added to it.

Other MZ Snacks

We also tried the Kroket which is a breadcrumb fried food roll stuffed with meat ragout. It epitomises the textural contrast: crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

It’s something we’ve not tried it before so we found it a little peculiar in taste. The filling tasted like mushroom soup to me for some strange reasons.

Frikendal

This snack, on the other hand, is quite delicious. It’s minced-meat sausage topped with onions and frite sauce. If you wish to skip the carbs (after chomping down the fries), you can try this bunless hot dog which is pretty good.

Verdict: Overall, we like that these high-quality fries are served piping hot and crispy.

We only wish that the fries could be more even in length as some of it were stubby which makes it difficult to dip into the small sauce container.

Hopefully, they can go local with the sauces some day. I’m pretty sure our Singapore satay sauce would go well with their fries. With that say, I cannot guarantee if we could still remain slim by eating lots of fries with satay sauce, salted egg york…

Rating: 3.5/5

Martin Zwerts

#B1-07 Holland Piazza