This Is Not a Beer Post.

And that headline is not a clever bit of Magritte-style surrealism. This isn't a beer post. It's a potato post. But anyway: I've found a high correlation between lovers of fine beverages and lovers of fried potatoes. Imagine a Venn diagram with massive overlap, and only two thin slivers on the far sides of either circle. One sliver represents health nuts, no-carb dieters, and other fools. The other sliver represents teetotalers.

This is all to point you toward an interesting article published in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. It's all about the bintje.

According to several sources in the article, global fast-food demands are putting Belgium's traditional bintje potato in danger. Why is that a problem? The bintje just makes flat-out better frites.

You've never heard a story like that, have you? About global demand of some kind stomping out local variations in flavor?

Well, what's to be done then?