♡ Fries ♡
A Weirdly Passionate Defense of In N Out Fries
French fries are a food for which our US laity has cultivated an unusually discriminating palette, probably owing to the fact that the potato sticks are so easy and tempting to come by here. This by itself is a good thing in my book. But where expertise lies, the threat of snobbery sometimes looms.
Let me recall to you a few facts about my highschool Chemistry class. My teacher was by turns domineering and incredibly goofy : hard to get a read on. Once a boy who had seemed to be in our teacher's good graces raised his hand and, when he was called on, lightly joked about the strangeness of units of measure : an attempt at simple, lesson-relevant fun. But our teacher only scolded him in a harsh and distant voice : People like you give Chemistry a bad name. And the student started to cry. A mutual friend in silence consoled him, but the teacher went right on teaching. This same teacher was also the first person I ever heard spurn In N Out's french fries, and he did so in a display of the same — though quite a bit smaller — vitriolic passion.
His critique established for me a few hallmarks of the genre ( viz., the fry-hater's In N Out review ) that I would come to see friends repeat over and over throughout the years. The outstanding quality of their burgers is always leveraged as a hefty juxtaposition against which to bash the bland fries. Comparisons to cardboard abound. And one never fails to mention how horrifyingly time-sensitive the task of eating them is. ( According to legend, failing this window is what turns them to cardboard, after all. )
For my part as a lay fry expert, I understand the orthodox reading, I know its ins and outs — but I dissent. First, on the counts of blandness : In N Out's fries are best paired with ketchup. In fact, I don't know any other fastfood fry that plays quite so well with the stuff ; the rest of my top contenders, Canes & Chik Fil A, have a special nonketchup sauce that lifts them up. But to speak to their own taste, they are one of the few fastfood places that doesn't trim off the potato skins, yes losing a smidge of punch in that, but gaining in a kind of lightness. Plus In N Out's plain and simple approach harkens back to the retro imaginary of SoCal surf and eatery culture that the restaurant offers up in spades ( read more about the details of that vibe in suboptimalism's wonderful travel essay here ).
Last let's talk about the claim that if you don't gobble them up in ten minutes, they turn to cardboard. Let's say it's true. If it is, maybe it's trying to tell us something. Maybe it's a grandparent calling to us from downstairs to come down honey before dinner gets cold. Should we really hate our fries for saying that to us ? Try this. Instead of getting incensed at their call, pull over. Grab a table. Or don't. Eat parked in some residential street. Do what you can to try to cherish them for what they are.
