French Fry Diary 388: Long John Silver's 2012

Since seeing the latest television commercials for Long John Silver's, I had suspected that they had changed their fries. The ones in the ads were natural cuts as opposed to the lightly battered crispy shoestrings they used to have. New fries? So I had to try them.

So I went over to the Long John Silver's and Taco Bell combo that's the only place to get LJS in my area. It was lunch time but not really all that crowded, but yet my wait time was about fifteen minutes. It seemed as if the crew was more concerned with drive thru than the customers at the counter. The drive thru was moving at quite a clip while about a half a dozen of us waited inside.

I got my usual - the chicken and chips. The chicken planks, battered white chicken strips, we're as good as ever. There was the usual tasty deep fried crumbs at the bottom of the box, along with the prerequisite hush puppies. This time however the hush puppies were kinda greasy and had a different texture, but that wasn't the only thing that was different.

Long John Silver's did indeed have new fries, and bad ones, a definite step down in quality and uniqueness. They were natural cuts lightly peppered and barely warm. There's nothing wrong with natural cuts, but these were disappointing natural cuts, and a much smaller portion than previously.

This was not a pleasant visit to my local LJS. I'm not writing them off completely though. Thankfully I can still get chicken planks a la carte.