Manneken Frites - Arvada

The concept of this restaurant is like none I have ever seen before. All they sell are soft drinks, Belgian beers, and Belgian fries. Belgian fries, by the way, resemble French fries quite a bit. Part of me wants to believe the pricing is OK since it is in line with a lot of the other bars and grills I’ve been to, but another part of me believes they’d do better business if they dropped those prices about 15%. Then again, the night I was there, the place was crawling – it was standing room only – and no one seemed outwardly affected by the prices, even though I noticed not a single person bought one of the imported, bottled, “flavored” Belgian beer that come in such flavors as, “peach.” We had two “Hoegaarden” white ales, and shared a “Large” with two sauces. All sizes except the Double come with one free sauce, and extra sauces are .75 each. One sauce is not enough for this guy and a Large. I would definitely need two sauces if I were putting the Large down by myself, and putting down the Large would be no contest for anyone – its not that big. Anyway, our two beers, Large fry, and one extra sauce, with tax, set us $18.48, and it was just a snack. The Hoegaardens were $5.00 each, which seemed fair, but I believe this place is going to struggle for business if the Arvada Brewery ever opens up next door, (it was supposed to open in July). This is a “no frills” restaurant with three tables inside, a small bar for overflow patrons, and a small patio outside. The inside is about as plain Jane as it gets, but the service is friendly and helpful, and they do a good job of keeping things fairly clean. I loved the variety of sauces, but the .75 for two ounces is a bit excessive, especially if one only wants ketchup. Most places, all the ketchup you want comes with the fries at a lower price. They should give up the ketchup at no additional charge. Anyway, they offer 20 varieties of sauce, some are vegan, and some are spicy hot. We had the Sucker Punch BBQ, (spicy), and the Pommolasses BBQ that combines pomegranate and molasses with BBQ sauce, and was much too sweet for my tastes. The spicy one was OK, but not that spicy. All in all, we liked the place, we liked the food, but we didn’t care for the prices much. We will probably come back, but we’d come back more often if the prices were even just a little bit better.