After a late night out with friends, nothing sounds better than delicious, greasy fries to round out the evening.
Now, thanks to some ingenious entrepreneurs in Belgium, you’ll be able to satiate your hunger without ever leaving the bar: a vending machine that dispenses fresh cooked french fries with a luxe twist.
According to the Guardian, the pre-cooked and frozen fries are dropped into piping hot oil or lard for a perfect golden brown finish.
The addition of beef fat is what sets this vending machine apart from previously built automated french fry vending machines. The animal drippings are considered by many Belgians to be the premiere fry fat — lending a deep, meaty flavor to the crispy potatoes.
After a 90-second wait, the $3.50 half-cup serving emerges from the vending machine accompanied by a choice of sauces. Customers can choose between ketchup, mayonnaises (which is the classic fry condiment across much of Europe) and a mysterious offering simply called “samurai.”
“This device was tested in India and in Romania,” Tuline Bey of distributor BreakTime Solutions told La Derniere Heure newspaper. “We have spent a year in development to adapt the machine to work with beef fat.”
Further development also went into designing a triple-filter ventilation system so neighbors aren’t overwhelmed by the smell of fries.
Belgians are serious about their fries (they invented the culinary delight in the 17th century) and consider the term “french fry” to be a grave mistake. According to the country’s tourism department, the term “french fry” is a linguistic mix-up that combined the old English term “to french” which means “cut into sticks” with the Belgian word for fries, “frites.”
Check out how the vending machine works in the two videos below.