HoneyDip Donuts & Diner is a nice little breakfast diner near where I grew up. For a long time they only sold donuts, but in the last few years they added the “diner” as well. So, how do their fries stack up? In a few words, they’re awesome! They’re currently my favorite fries, and I make a good effort to get here once every other week, even if I end up eating more than just fries. Their fries are well-cooked, though the most recent time I went, the outside was a bit crispier than normal. No effect on the potato insides though. Thicker than average straight cut, with light to light-moderate salt. The real interesting detail is the seasoning. I asked the server what it was and she told me it was garlic and pepper (my first suspicion was just pepper). Which doesn’t exactly *sound* good, but it tastes amazing. Very light, but in this case that’s a very good thing. I highly recommend these fries to anybody, because they’re just different enough to stand out and still standard fries at the same time.

Location: Kenny Road, 1/2 mile south of Henderson Road

Sizes: Side

Price: $2.50 (Pictured is a double order)

Cut: Straight, slightly larger than normal.

Salt: Light-moderate

Seasoning: Light garlic and pepper (to die for!)

Other: Bacon Donut Sandwich, if you’re in the mood for cholesterol poisoning.

It’s been too long. I’ve had Buckeye Donuts before. Their donuts are great (well, what’d you expect?). But they do also have a food menu. So considering this is right next to OSU Campus, I decided to get some of their fries. The first thing that’s obvious on having these fries is that they’re way too heavily seasoned. And on top of that the seasoning is horribly uneven. On any given fry a random side of the fry will get 90% of the seasoning, and it’s so much that after eating a large order, my hands were stained with an almost rust color. On top of that, the seasoning has little discernable taste. After I finished the fries, I scraped up a fingers’ worth of seasoning from the container, ate it, and still came away with no taste. It’s too bad they’re so aesthetically displeasing, because everything else was done just about right. Well cooked, properly crispy. Pure straight cut, about the same cut as Wendy’s fries. Lacking a little bit of taste, but that’s not always a big deal. In this case, one major flaw really messed up what should have been a really good french fry.

Sizes: Regular, Large

Price: $1.95, 2.95

Cut: Straight

Salt: Almost None.

Seasoning: Too much, and lacking any taste.

Other: Stick to their donuts, they’re great. Though I may go here again to try their tater tots.

So, Winking Lizard Tavern. What gives? They’re not a fast food restaurant. Well, no. This isn’t really the kind of place you go for food, it’s more about the very large selection of beers with names I can’t begin to understand. But they still have fries. And I was here on Monday night with this weird thing called “friends”. So how were their fries? Pretty good. A smallish steak cut, with absolutely no salt. Well-cooked (as in the fries were soft on the inside, and not particularly crispy but still reasonable). Not terribly hot, the kind of thing that matters more at a restaurant where supposedly your food is cooked on the spot. Still, pretty good fries, and a good decision on the steak cut given you’re probably here to drink yourself into submission, not to eat food.

Location: 5th and Grandview Ave. (Location I went to): Also one on Bethel and Godown Road.

Sizes: Side. (One size)

Price: $2.25

Cut: Steak (though a smaller steak cut, not monstrously large fries).

Salt: Almost none.

Seasoning: None.

Other: Beer. Did I mention beer? Not for dip, but it does go pretty well with fries.

It had been quite a while since I’ve even had fries at a Wendy’s. Considering that, I decided to go to the nearest Wendy’s to my house, on the corner of High and Torrence. As anyone who studies french fries knows, several years ago Wendy’s changed their fries from a brand that had a heavy tendency to be undercooked (soggy), to a brand that’s a narrower (thought still roughly classified as a straight) cut. At the same time they also changed their salt to the “sea salt” variety. So how are they now? Still a bit less cooked than hoped, at about 1 out of 6 fries you can feel the potato on the inside being less cooked (kind of a slightly “hard” or “solid” feel, rather than the ideal flaky feel) than you’d hope for. A big deal was made out of having visible potato skins, though to be honest it doesn’t affect the taste in the slightest. I’d assume it was just painted on for effect if I didn’t know better. It’s still an improvement from the variety cooked several years ago.

Location: Everywhere (though I got mine at High and Torrence)

Sizes: Small, Medium, Large

Price: $1-2

Cut: Straight (thought a slightly narrow variation of it, roughly the typical fast food cut).

Salt: Light-Moderate (Sea Salt)

Seasoning: None.

Other: Sure you can have ketchup, but you don’t go to Wendy’s to have fries with that. That’s why they sell Frosty’s.

McDonald’s. The gold standard of fast food fries. Insanely consistent, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. McDonald’s has been delighting customers with its shoestring cut french fries for many years. No matter which McDonald’s chain you go to, it’s guaranteed that you will be getting the exact same product, every time, every place. McDonald’s does as good a job as any fast food restaurant in ensuring that their fries are fresh. Like any one though, there’s an occasional chance you’ll get a (relatively) stale batch. But even then, the taste isn’t compromised, just the temperature. I would estimate at around a 1/100 chance that you will get a batch that is salted too heavily to readily enjoy, and this is the only consistent weakness of McDonald’s. Even when it’s a normal amount of salt, it’s a bit heavier on it than is necessary. It’s not like their fries aren’t tasty enough to enjoy without it. But McDonald’s fries are standard fare, just taken to the ultimate level of consistency. And it’ll be a cold day in hell before you get something else than what you’re expecting.

Foundation: 1940

Location: Everywhere.

Sizes: Small, Medium, Large.

Prices: $1-2.

Cut: Shoestring

Salt: Moderate-Heavy.

Seasoning: None.

Condiments: Ketchup (but that’s for heathens).