Rather than damning an entire Country, which would be consistent with my accolades for Moroccan French fries, I just wanted to highlight a glaring shortcoming of an otherwise fine restaurant.
Now that Kentucky Fried Chicken (now KFC) has changed their fries they no longer qualify as the worst you can get. Those of us old enough to remember can recall that the cardboard box that Kentucky Fried Chicken fries used to come in actually rivalled the fries in flavor.
No, the fries I’m talking about today are julienne, but dry and tasteless. They exactly remove any pleasure from any plate upon which they reside no matter how good the entree. I’m talking, of course, of the French fries offered by Ted’s Montana Grill.
I’ve been to three of their locations now and I have to hand it to them, their fries are consistent. I asked the wait staff about these fries and they’ve even taken them back and returned with freshly cooked batches to see if it made a difference. In the end they usually agree that the fries really aren’t their strong suit.
What could possibly explain this? I *have* to think that owner Ted Turner or whomever is proxying for him in selecting the menu items simply has dramatically different tastes than I do. If it was a case of bad ingredients or sloppy cooking technique surely replacement fries and different restaurants would uncover that.
Have you ever gone to a seafood restaurant and ordered a steak? I always find that they never do a very good job of it, frequently charring the meat and making it as unpalatable as possible. You may argue that it’s not their forté, after all they *are* a seafood house. But I argue that, if you can grill fish without scorching it, you can certainly at least not massacre a steak. No, I’m subscribing to the more paranoid notion that chefs that work at a seafood restaurant feel that if you visit such an establishment and order something so culinarily contrary to the restaurant’s mission, you deserve to have a terrible meal.
I’m tending towards a similar theory for Ted’s Montana Grill French fries. Could it be that food elitists feel that ordering the lowly French fry with your exquisite Bison-based meal is tantamount to heresy? And your punishment is to endure the worst that can be offered?
As you may have guessed by now, French fries are an extraodinarily important aspect of most restaurant’s offerings. If they aren’t good, I’m usually not a repeat customer.