Is it fries or is it fries? It is a recurring discussion in the Netherlands. Below the major rivers we all say fries anyway. But also far above the rivers, this word is used for the golden yellow potato sticks. The Tilburg chip maker Rens van de Plas has mapped the language border.
Van der Plas looked at the online menus of more than 150 snack bars in the Netherlands to determine where the fries-french fries line lies. “I always thought that the border was roughly the same as the Waal. Everything above it was fries, everything below it was fries. So there is little truth to that: the border is much more mobile and does not necessarily follow the course of the rivers,” he says on X , where he various cards from fries/fries that say the Netherlands post.
Villages or towns where the menu said fries received a red dot. Spots with fries received a dark green dot and places with fries a light green dot. Rens’s maps show that they also say fries or fries in some places in Flevoland, Groningen and North Holland.
“The limit was much higher than I thought. My theory: I think it concerns Brabant snack bar owners who have moved to the north and have stuck to the correct way to name a snack,” says Van der Plas at Brabant Today.
By the way, the Netherlands has almost 5,000 snack bars. The question is therefore to what extent the research by Van der Plas, who calls himself an investigative journalist, is representative. “We still have enough work to do in Brabant to ensure that they also start saying fries elsewhere,” he says.