The case for malt vinegar on french fries | Highly Recommended
Keith Pandolfi
At Molly Malone's Irish Pub in Covington on a recent Friday afternoon, three men sat at the bar eating fish and chips while passing a bottle of Heinz malt vinegar back and forth several times over. I was one of those men. And while the fellas on either side of me were strangers, we all seemed to share a similar passion for the rich, tangy and malty condiment that's more associated with the English, who made it by fermenting past-its-prime ale, than the Irish.
My first experience with malt vinegar happened when I was in elementary school. My best friend, Sean, was Canadian, and on a trip to visit his extended family in London, Ontario, we stopped at a fast food joint called Harvey’s to eat. I remember how excited Sean was by the malt vinegar's presence on the table. And while I have zero memory of what the fries tasted like, I do remember the toasty, tangy vinegar, to which I was immediately addicted.
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Fun fact: A few years later, when another fast-food restaurant called Hardee's opened in Mount Washington, I mistakenly thought it was the same place. Harvey's? Hardee's? You can see the cause of my confusion. But no matter how the name was pronounced, there was no malt vinegar to be had. I still blame Hardee's for that betrayal.
Since then, I’ve only seen malt vinegar at British or Irish pubs (Nicholson’s, The Pub and Molly’s, etc), fast-food fish-and-chip joints like Long John Silver’s and Captain D’s, and, for some strange reason, Penn Station.
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Most places serve Heinz malt vinegar, which is OK, though there are far better versions, including London Pub, which Arnold's has been offering for its Lenten Friday fish fries, and Cincinnati's very own MadHouse malt vinegar, which you can buy at local markets and is offered as a condiment at Galactic Fried Chicken, in Dayton, Kentucky.
I'm not knocking ketchup here. But malt vinegar has a way of zinging up fries and other fried foods in a way that ketchup, despite its vinegar base, simply doesn't. It works better on British-style "chips," which are wider and better able to absorb the condiment. The Pub (Rookwood and Crestview Hills) serves a good version. If there are others, let me know.
I wish more local restaurants and pubs would offer malt vinegar as an option. In the meantime, I might just start bringing along a bottle or a few packets of my own. If I'm feeling generous, I might just pass it along to the fella next to me, too.
Highly Recommended is a weekly spotlight on some of food writer Keith Pandolfi's favorite finds as he eats his way across Greater Cincinnati. Find more of his recent food writing here.