Anno 1887: the story of the Sausmeesters

Flemish roots

The shop's full name says where the craft comes from: Vlaams Friteshuis, a Flemish fries house. Belgium is the motherland of the thick-cut, double-fried frite, and the Vleminckx name has been attached to that tradition since 1887. When the family set up at Voetboogstraat 33 in 1957, they brought the Flemish method to the middle of Amsterdam: cut fresh, fry twice, serve in a paper cone.

The Sausmeester

Somewhere along the way the shop earned its second name: de Sausmeester, the sauce master. The fries made the reputation, the sauce wall made the legend. More than twenty jars, from Dutch classics like joppie and oorlog to the Belgian row of samurai, andalouse and hannibal. Het Parool, reviewing that hannibal sauce decades into the shop's life, concluded that Vleminckx is rightfully an institution.

Nothing much has changed

That is the secret. The shop is still a hole in the wall. The fries are still homemade, the sign still warns that the price does not include sauce, and the queue still forms by late morning: locals who have eaten here since childhood next to visitors holding a guidebook that promised them the best fries in Amsterdam. In 2013 the AD Friettest added its oorkonde to the wall. The fries did not notice; they were busy being fried.

The family today

The same family keeps three more counters within two hundred metres: The Chicken Bar on Voetboogstraat, Fish & Fries on Muntplein, and The Dutch Chocolate Bar on Heiligeweg. Different crafts, same conviction: do one thing, do it right, do it for decades.