Fry Baby

Lipstick is up.
Chewing gum is through the roof!
Whittling is making a comeback, especially now that chances are good that your local hospital has someone on staff that can reattach a finger or two.
When we can’t afford to waste our money on the supposed finer things, we return – like the Prodigal Son, to those tried and true, simple, straightforward pleasures of life: corn on the cob, a long walk through the woods or, in my case, the French fry.
To be honest, I’ve always thought that a good French fry was one of the finer things, but was hesitant to admit it. After all, its basic components are on the list of politically incorrect ingredients: oil, potato, salt!
Yes, there are alleged French fries that are made without one or more of those ingredients, but what they actually are is really anybody’s guess.
And now I am going to admit a belief that may remove what last remnant of respect you had for me:
The greatest French fry in the world is the McDonald’s French Fry!
That said, I should note that not even McDonald’s can make a great French fry on a consistent basis.
I actually remember my first McDonald’s fry. We had just returned from Berlin – where my father was stationed, and like a kid on Christmas morning ‘the Colonel’ scooted us around metropolitan Washington D.C. eager to show us all of the innovations we had missed living overseas. There were Mustang convertibles, Boeing 747s rising up over the Potomac from National Airport, and – on the Baltimore-Washington Expressway just south of Beltsville, an odd, rectangular glass building with ‘Golden Arches’.
There were no drive-thrus then, but neither were there long lines, and with its limited menu fast food could also mean hot food- including those remarkable fries.
Timing is everything. In the last 20 years I would estimate that - out of 2000 visits, I have tasted properly cooked and served McDonald’s French Fries at most three or four times. You see, to wring the perfect flavor out of those emaciated strips of pale yellow tuber everything has to be perfect. They have to be cooked in the hot oil for exactly the right amount of time: no more, no less. They have to be immediately removed from the oil and, after a cursory rapping of the metal basket to remove excess grease, scattered in a thin layer over the serving area. And they have to be quickly and thoroughly doused with salt so that the tiny crystals adhere to the remaining patina of oil.
And then of course – perhaps most importantly, you have to place your order just in time to have those perfectly prepared fries scooped up and served to you – as the old saying goes, ‘piping hot’.
You eat these fries with your teeth – not your mouth, breaking each tiny shaft open with a kind of Irish step dance: quick jabs with the heels of your incisors, releasing the captured steam, crunching the salt, savoring their ephemeral vinegary tartness, and noting the remarkable balance of flavor that is possible in a simple recipe.
You need to eat these miniature two-by-fours quickly too. They should always be the first item out of the bag, beginning before you have even left the parking area, using your fingers like chopsticks to clutch a half dozen or so at a time and shoveling them quickly into your open mouth.
It’s like walking on hot coals: a potentially spiritual experience but, he who hesitates is lost. If these fries cool they are better used to build a miniature yellow picket fence round the houses on your train set in the basement. Once cooled these fries are like the trilobite uncovered by an archaeologist: fossilized fodder for the scientist to examine and file away. Not food at all.
But don’t get all exited. As I said, chances are that they – the fries themselves, will never have a chance to devolve from a perfect state.
Everything is working against you.
If you are in a long line, or the fries have languished under their tanning lights for more than a moment, or they have lain a few seconds too long in the hot oil or – and this happens very frequently, the salt has either been niggardly applied or not at all, then perfection will never pass through your lips.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who – though regular customers of Mickey D’s, have never tasted these fries at the peak of their potential.
When they are good they are emblematic of the majesty of simplicity – in all things.
And when they are not, they are like most of life: disappointing.
Yes, there are other fries, some with highly desirable qualities.
I remember fries from the base PX in Berlin. They served them fresh from the fryolator, dripping with grease, dropped them right into a plastic bag and – after I first pumped a good portion of vinegary catsup right into the bag, I would ride my bike home in the dark, one eye on the road, the other in the bag with my cheek and mouth.
I remember as well, Thrashers, in Ocean City, Maryland. On the boardwalk there they serve only one item: Large, roughly cut, always freshly cooked French-fries in several sizes, with salt and vinegar the only available condiments.
Trashers' fries were – as I remember them, like the big brother of the McDonald’s Fry, though far more consistently produced, far more substantial. I think they were great fries, but I have to admit that my memory of their flavor is hopelessly entangled in the smell of the ocean, the creak of boardwalk, and the hormones of youth.
Still, you can’t help but be impressed by Thrasher’s dedication to the fry: despite 80 years of success, they have never added additional items to their menu: they have never had to ask, ‘you want fries with that?’
I think that if McDonalds wants to expand – in recognition of the power of their small fry and, acknowledging the need for simple, less costly diversions in this economic environment, they’d devise little kiosks for the beach, or the boardwalk, or along the popular streets of picturesque tourist towns, where a single, apron-ed huckster would serve only French fries: fresh, hot, always overflowing their paper holster whatever the serving size.
Simplicity is clarity.
Simplicity is honesty.
Simplicity can help us survive the tough times ahead. That, and a belly full of hot, salty fries!