More popular and central is Flagey (where I met the doctor), but though I could find nothing wrong with its product — O.K., my fries were a tiny bit soggy — it was on a huge, impersonal (if stylish) square that could not compare with the neighborhood charm of the smaller places. Even the spot I walked to from there, Fritkot Bompa, was instantly more entertaining. A handwritten sign advertised “tartare maison” — homemade tartar sauce — and when I asked the worker if it was the sauce of the day, he replied with a flourish: “It’s the sauce of the day, of the week, of the year!” I liked this guy, just as I liked the tween girl who offered me a cheery “Bon appétit!” as she walked in while I munched away. (And I loved the tartare maison, thicker than any fried clam accompaniment Americans are likely to be used to.)

I also got into a rhythm with my nonfrites diet and exercise plan. I had discovered Exki, a chain that serves sells prepared salads and sandwiches, often with organic ingredients, and offers cafelike seating with free Internet and newspapers. A shout-out also to the choose-your-own-ingredients salad at the Deli, where 6.50 euros got me a meal-size salad and very friendly service. Exercising went less well — it happened to be freezing when I was there, and so my two attempts at jogging were brief; I made up for it with a pricey but much needed yoga class, hoping my fellow yogis could not smell the beef fat vapors emerging from my pores.

Though most stands I visited had an old-fashioned look, one stood out as purposefully modern: Chez Fernand, in the upscale but disappointingly not quaint Woluwe-St.-Lambert neighborhood. It was a family-run operation (yes!) that had the look of a fast-food chain (no!), with employees in purplish-pink uniforms that matched the neon décor (no no no!). Still, at 1.80 euros, their fries were the cheapest I’d found, and easily as crisp and tasty as the others. The owners hurried fries to customers sitting on the plaza outside (the first table service I had seen), and I witnessed a very uncorporate potato delivery: an old guy in a blue sweater with elbow patches hauling bags one by one from a hand truck into the kitchen.

If I had to say which spot I liked best, I guess it was Friterie du Miroir, northwest of the city center in the Jette commune. Sure, my fries, a big pile of them, were perfectly crisp and so hot I felt I was eating them straight from the fryer, but I’m not sure that’s why I chose it. Maybe it’s because I happened to order them with spicy pili pili sauce, or because it was in Place Reine-Astrid, which also hosts a daily green market, or because I was so far from the touristy center, or because I ate them chatting with a European Union translator, or because the owner of the place had run it for 37 years. Frites, I now knew, were not just fries.