Fat, salt and animal: these are the basic ingredients for some of the most voluminous – in taste and weight – snacks in the snack bars of the world. Healthy, no. But sometimes, when autumn ‘comes’, delicious comfort food.
It must have been about thirty years ago. We just had a delicious one smoked meat sandwich at the iconic BEN’S Delicatessen had dinner in Montreal, we were pulled by friends to an unsightly joint not far away. “You should try it, nice and fatty.” And it was indeed greasy: fries with a thick gravy on top and topped with some crumbly young cheese.
We were introduced poutine the fatty snack that was later extensively scrutinized by the culinary glutton Anthony Bourdain in his TV series Parts unknown : “Thematically culinary, of course, terrible, but delicious.” A dish that is slowly creeping into Dutch snack culture. Undoubtedly with adjustments, because you can’t simply get ‘frommelkaas’, clumps of curd, in the Netherlands. And they form an essential part of the real poutine.
Where does the poutine come from? The dish appears to have originated somewhere in the countryside of the Canadian province of Quebec in the 1950s. There is uncertainty about the exact location and inn, but most poutinists point to the town of Warwick.
There would be Eddy Lainesse in the local diner in 1957 Le Lutin qui rit ordered a portion of fries with thick gravy – entirely in accordance with British tradition, because they were already serving them long before that gravy about fries and chips. Often served as a side dish fromage and crotte served, lumps of curd from which the whey has been removed and which have been slightly dried. Let’s say the preliminary stage of making and pressing regular cheese – in this case Canadian cheddar.
Eddy asked the café owner to spread the curd over the thick fries and then pour the sauce over them. To which he said: “Ça va faire une maudite poutine”, loosely translated: “That will be quite a mess.” But it turned out to be a success, and poutine is now a national dish – although the people from western Canada say: that’s not Canadian, that’s Quebecois.
Which doesn’t mean you have to heavy snack cannot be obtained everywhere in the country, sometimes in a more extensive form such as the kamikaze (with chili pepper and Tabasco). At La Banquise in Montreal, where Bourdain also ate his poutine, they now have thirty poutine varieties.
Cape Verdean hairdresser
Of course we have our own poutine, the hair salon. Fries covered with shawarma and cheese, briefly put under the grill and then topped with salad. Also a dish with a special origin story. Twenty years ago, Cape Verdean hairdresser Nataniel ‘Tati’ Gomes went to El Aviva shawarma shop in Rotterdam’s Delfshaven for his usual lunch and ordered a dish with his favorite ingredients: fries topped with shawarma and some cheese, which had to be put under the grill. With some salad on top, it became his standard lunch dish, and soon his regular order was called the ‘kapsalon’.
First popular with Rotterdam’s youth, the hair salon quickly conquered the rest of the country. And the rest of the world, in different variants. In Turkey you can simply get it with kebab or döner, in Suriname with garlic sauce or peanut sauce. In Jakarta it is now served with yellow rice instead of fries and in the Nepalese capital Katmandu a local version became popular after a Nepalese chef ended up in a snack bar and discovered the hair salon there. In Nepal they replaced the shawarma with chicken or fish and the standard aluminum container was replaced with a porcelain plate. And they drink yak butter tea with it. Also nice and fat. By the way, ‘Tati’ Gomes no longer eats in a hair salon: he died last summer at the age of 47.
Monster of a sandwich
At the francesinha , Porto’s iconic dish, we drink beer. But that’s part of this monster of a sandwich. Or sandwich? A stacked plate with layers of toast, grilled meat, slices of ham and sausages over which cheese is melted, topped with a fried egg, served with a tomato beer sauce and fries.
We ate half a portion of it at Snackbar Santiago, which was packed. Even skinny students could eat an entire plate, along with a beer. Our excuse for that half? We just had a portion too cachorrino at Gazelo, a kind of hot dog made of thin crispy bread, filled with sausage, covered with a layer of melted cheese and brushed with butter and a spicy sauce. Also served with a cold beer. And that in Porto, the city of port.
The franceshina originated in the 1950s when the Portuguese chef Daniel David de Silva returned to his hometown of Porto after a stay in Belgium and France, where he tried to adapt the famous croque monsieur (our toasted sandwich) to Portuguese tastes. He introduced a ‘toasted sandwich’ with local sausages, grilled meat and a sauce of tomato cooked in beer at the A Regaleira restaurant in Rua de Bonjardim. The dish was soon nicknamed franceshina, ‘little French’, so we have to take ‘small’ with a grain of salt.
French fries on bread
What Da Silva did not bring with him from Belgium is the machine gun. Also bread, also fries, also sauces, but just a little bit different. The mitraillette, or ‘machine gun’ has nothing to do with subtle Belgian cooking, but everything to do with a filling student snack. At least in Brussels. The origins of this carbohydrate bomb probably lie in a different place and in a different time.
During the time of food shortage during the last world war, some people in Wallonia ate fries with some butter on their sandwich in the absence of real toppings. In the 1970s, that sandwich was replaced by baguette and was given the nickname mitraillette, perhaps because of its shape: a baguette cut in half and loaded with fried or baked meat, thick fries, and sauces.
The meat can be anything from the fryer – frikandel, chicken currywurst or köfte – and for a sauce you can simply choose from mayonnaise, garlic sauce, béarnaise, curry ketchup or tomato ketchup. Or a combination, go crazy. To make the snack ‘healthy’ you can also add some tomato slices or some lettuce leaves.
The machine gun has spread through various parts of Belgium. In Liège they call it a routine and one in Hainaut special or pain fries . It goes by the name across the border in Northern France americain a not-too-subtle reference to the overstuffed American hamburger buns.
Yet the snack has also made its way to America. We ate it years ago in Manhattan in the Belgian café Petite Abeille, where it was on the menu as ‘mitraillette’ next to classics like moules frites , stew and stoemp. Add a glass of Orval. Unfortunately, Petite Abeille is closed. Maybe those overstuffed burger buns were more to the taste of real Americans.
The moral of this story? There isn’t one. Too much fat, salt and meat is not healthy for us. But it can be so nice and comforting sometimes. And the nice thing is: you can also make your own poutine, kapsalon, franceshina or mitraillette. And maybe one day your dish will make it to the snack bar, under your name.