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A problem with flying to North America after a week in Belgium and the Netherlands is the Trans-Atlanatic Beer and Fries Degradation. I am a connoisseur of most stuff that have wild, destructive love affairs with my arteries. French fries, which are plain inedible in India, find their spiritual home in Belgium.

The funny thing is that ‘French’ fries is actually Belgian and even more specially, not even Belgian French but Flemish, which is actually the Dutch spoken by the people living in Belgium’s Flanders region who consider their Dutch to be the real thing while the philistines up north in Amsterdam have let their tongue be corrupted by historical trade relations with the British. Real Dutch, I was told by a local, must sound like German spoken with a middle-eastern accent, with an ample splattering of saliva.

The fries (or frites, as it’s known locally) is an art form, not an industrial process as we know it today thanks to McDonalds and the ilk. The potatoes are specially grown, lovingly cared for, fed good Belgian beer, allowed to smoke the finest Marijuana and then after a special pooja, given the honour of being made into fries. They are fried twice to get that special brown crispiness on the outside and the softness of butter inside and are served with a multitude of sauces unlike the unworthy ketchup elsewhere. They are served with Mayonnaise, Curry sauce, peanut sauce and 20 other delectable options that do justice to the object d’art that is good French fries.

It’s not just the fries, the Belgians spend most of their lives either drinking great beer or making even greater beer. There are more beers per capita of population than anywhere else in the world. The best beers come from Trappist monasteries. These austere, Cistercian order of monks founded in 1664 based on the motto ‘Shut up and make awesome beer’, are all over Belgium and in between prayer, keeping quiet and thoughtful prognostication on the world’s ills, brew mind-blowingly tasty beer. In fact, the best Trappist beer is so tasty that monastery authorities restrict production to ensure the monks have time to pray.

So after a week of Chimay, Belgo Lupo and the like, ably accompanied by fries that give one an orgasm with every bite, traveling to North America is no different from a trip to Tihar jail from a culinary perspective. The mainstream beer in the US is essentially diluted water with the flavour removed. The fries are made of potatoes interned in labour camps, tortured for life and then brutally fried till they lose all personality. Then they are served with with a viscous red chemical that is allegedly made from tomatoes. As a British comedian once observed, ‘The founding fathers took guns with them but forgot their cooking pots back in Europe.’

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