McDonald’s fries used to be the gold standard for me, as well, but these days I prefer skin-on potatoes. When a McDonald’s fry is on, it’s just the perfect balance of textures and flavor for me. Maybe I would prefer something a little more thickly cut these days, but it’s difficult for me not to rate a McDonald’s fry any less than 10/10 for its style, and 8.5-9/10 overall.
McDonald’s fries have changed. I only like them fresh from the fryer.
I use Door Dash and even that short delay makes the fries less appealing.
- Switch from beef tallow to vegetable oil. A dark, dark day.
In 2002 they switched oil blends again to reduce trans-fats.
Which is the oil that tastes like old fish? Maybe I’m piling on BK, but one the reasons I never buy their fries is because their fries taste like old fish. (Also, they are oily and limp.)
Any kind of fry loses quality quickly, if there’s any delay between hot out of the fryer and eating. That’s the main reason why it took so long for delivery to catch on for the conventional burger-and-fries fast food places.
I guess nowadays, we’re either just desperate enough, or our standards have dropped.
I’m not actually sure that either is true - even when I worked in fast food restaurants 40 years ago , there were plenty of take-out orders , which weren’t necessarily any faster than delivery.
No faster at getting it home, maybe. But you eat the fries in the car.
I was in college in upstate New York in the late 1980s and the local McDonald’s franchise was trying out home delivery (or dorm delivery in my case). I read someplace that the big holdup was figuring out a way to keep the fries hot and crispy.
(BTW, as I remember, there was a minimum five-dollar order limit and it was not possible for me to hit the limit if I just ordered for myself, which tells you something about how much the food cost back then.)
That does not describe the McD’s fries I typically get. Definitely not limp. Maybe slightly oily, but not as oily as the fries I actually prefer to McD’s.
As for the oil, that’s probably canola if you’re tasting fishy stuff. Yeah, I get hints of that (and that’s why I don’t have any canola in the house), but it doesn’t really bug me enough when it comes to the fries. My favorite, 5 Guys, uses peanut oil which has none of that going on. (And it seems most people don’t taste the fishiness of heated canola.)
I think they were talking about Burger King there, but that’s not my experience with BK either. Most BK locations seem to have switched to that potato starch coated type of fry which is meant to keep them crispier. I dislike the taste, personally, of the coated ones.
Checkers/Rallys has cheeseburgers for $1.59, last time I checked. They’re the same as McD’s minus the onions.
OK, I missed that, because there was a conversation on McD’s that was being replied to on their switch from tallow to oil to lower transfat oil.
Can’t comment much about BK fries other than they really sucked way back when (limp/soggy), then they did the starchy stuff which sucked even more.
What’s weird is that I do taste slight fishiness in McDonald’s oil, and – looking it up now – it is a canola blend, which makes sense to me.
Rallys burgers arw very good and have a unique taste. It’s one of my favorite places. I get the Big Buford combo.
And their 2 slices for $3 pizza is not bad.
5 Guys is the only place I consider to have decent fries for a chain. Though, as I’ve said before many times here I’m sure, I grew up down the block from Thrasher’s french fries and consider that my baseline (not school cafeteria fries or tasteless shoestrings and the like) and default style ie “boardwalk fries.” I guess you could say the price is extreme customization since you can choose any toppings. Maybe that’s why Roy Rogers and Fuddruckers failed, I guess.
Never heard of Thrashers, but looked up some pix, and damn, those do look good!
Shake Shack has really good fries, I think. But neither is fast food.