French Fry Diary 585: Pineapple

I have been hearing about this place for quite a while from friends and family, and from Foursquare, so we finally decided to try it. If I'm being honest, all the Chinese restaurants we have fairly local are... just adequate. You know, they're not bad, but they're not great either. So we have been tentatively on the lookout for a new good Chinese restaurant, and Pineapple was supposed to be great.

Pineapple is a small place, not unlike our normal Chinese food place (which does not have French fries, it should be noted), and it's tucked into a just as small shopping center I'm actually familiar with. Along side the Berlin's Gaetano's, Stormwatch Comics, and Los Amigos, if you look close, you can find Pineapple. It's not easy to find if you don't know where to look.

On our first trip, we ordered online (a handy thing, and a definite plus) and picked it up to eat at home. I got the teriyaki chicken on skewers (which can be ordered with all white meat if desired, which I did), with broccoli and rice. The chicken was really good, better than I usually get at Chinese restaurants. The terrific teriyaki sauce also comes on the side. I saved some of it for later to use on other stuff, including the French fries Pineapple also has.

The fries in question were regular cut deep-fried frozen fries delivered in a classic diner styrofoam container, and they were awesome. They were especially awesome when dipped in the teriyaki sauce. I think we have definitely found a new Chinese restaurant locally. Pineapple lives up to their rep, and we'll be back.

French Fry Diary 538: Landscape of Flavors, Breakfast

This place was a bit of a shock, made more so because we were at Disney. I really hope this is an anomaly. From the moment the day before, when I had FourSquared from Landscape of Flavors, I had a few folks email me and Tweet me that I had to try breakfast there, especially the breakfast potatoes and/or the tandoori potatoes.

Indeed, I have only heard good things about this food court since it, and its hotel, Art of Animation, opened. The more remarkable tales tell of folks coming all the way across the bridge behind it from Pop Century for the food. I admit my curiosity was piqued, because I like Pop Century.

The customer service was abysmal. Skipped lines, forced to buy items not wanted, and just a total crap attitude. No one was going to get a 'What Would Walt Do? pin here, that was for sure. So it must be the food, right? Once breakfast was gotten back to the table, I'm really not so sure.

I was planning to get the tandoori potatoes but quite frankly, that did not look all that appetizing. Maybe I missed out on a serious potato delight, but really I just didn't want to even try them. I opted for the regular breakfast potatoes instead, along with some barely warm, dry, overseasoned Challah French toast. What a waste of Challah bread.

The potatoes were of the shredded variety, not the usual tasty diced throughout most of Disney, and over at Pop Century. These shredded potatoes are then baked a la kugel, sliced up and served in squares.

Sounds good, right? Not really. For the most part it's a soggy mess, with occasional a pepper speck or two for flavor. The only good part is the top skin which took most of the heat baking. What good is a breakfast potato dish without a little crisp to it? These needed crisp, they needed seasoning, and after a few moments it was like eating cold mush. Suddenly the tandoori potatoes didn't seem like a bad choice.

This was by far one of the worst breakfasts I've had at Disney. Maybe they deserve a second chance, but it will take quite a bit to get me to come back. Just say no to Landscape of Flavors.

French Fry Diary 504: Kobe Grill & Buffet

The sign went up over a month before they opened. Kobe Grill Sushi & Seafood Buffet in big red neon letters. Everyone was talking about the new place opening up in what was currently a dead strip mall, even the K-Mart and SuperFresh had vacated. There was nothing here, nothing but the big red neon sign, and folks working tirelessly inside to renovate and construct. Now, after less than a month open, the sign reads Kobe Grill Sushi & Seafood uffet. That's not a good omen.

When you walk in there is a quite beautiful lobby entrance, fountain, sculpture, and water wall between the lobby and actual restaurant. I should say up front, this place was way fancier than the buffets I have been to, even at the casinos. This place was huge, and despite what it says on Foursquare, it wasn't all that crowded. Maybe the novelty and newness has worn off after a month? I know that the sign maintenance has.

As soon as we were seated, and had our drink order taken, they brought us lobster, two halves of lobster, one for each of us. I guess it was free half-lobster night. I'm not a eating-the-inside-of-a-fish-thing's-scary-armor-skin-type guy, so I passed. They took mine away, and I couldn't help but wonder what they did with it. I hope it didn't end up on someone else's plate. The Bride wasn't too thrilled with hers, and didn't eat much.

The buffet was not large. It was spread out over a large area, but really, not all that much offered, and for catastrophically picky eater me, not all that much either. On my first foray into the buffet (or uffet), I got buttered potatoes and sweet fried plantains. Both were very good, and the potatoes were very soft and well cooked buttered wedges of potato, succulent. These were very good, two thumbs up. I got seconds on those babies. However the French fries were regular cut frozen fries, which seemed to have lived beneath the heat lamps for much longer than I would to think about. Not good.

There was grilled steak available but it didn't seem like anyone was ready cook any new for you. No, scratch that, they seemed unwilling to. We also seemed to have multiple people waiting on us due to the lack of crowd. We couldn't find butter or knives. Is this the TSA? Some of the food was very good, and some really not, and the customer service was also not, despite being plentiful. And when I say really not, I mean really really not good. This was really not a good experience.

French Fry Diary 487: Arby's House Made Chips

As part of their promotion for their King's Hawaiian roast beef sandwich, along with their Triple Berry Shake, Arby's has also introduced House Made Chips. The ads claim they are made fresh daily with Arby's sauce seasoning.

A new fried potato product at Arby's? Guess where I'm going for lunch. When I first got to the restaurant, the counterperson was helping a handicapped lady to her seat, and getting her food and drink for her. What FourSquare says about the West Berlin Arby's having "the nicest fast food staff ever" is right on target. Serious props to Sabrina who took my order and the lady's before me.

For only $1.79, these kettle style potato chips come in a very large portion, and in a wax paper bag like old fashioned chips back in the day, nice touch. As far as 'made fresh daily,' I suspect they're made in batches early in the day and kept under heat lamps. That's not a bad thing though, chips don't have to be fryer hot. Although if that's what you like, plan an early lunch.

At first glance it appeared a few of them were burnt, but that's not the case at all. These have just the right texture for homemade chips, crispy yet meaty at once, like well done fried potatoes. The Arby's sauce seasoning they are tossed in provides a delicious and unique, not quite barbeque flavor. Good stuff.

These are so good, I had almost eaten the whole order without even thinking about it. Truly the mark of a good potato chip - you can't eat just one. Thumbs up. Way to go, Arby's.

Thanks to my friend Bryan who hipped me to these new chips via the Facebook, and to Sabrina who has changed my mind about how I feel about Arby's.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #98

Here's another Somebody Else's Fries from Andrea on FourSquare, a double shot of onion rings and French fries at Friendly's.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #96

This great looking example of the favorite fried food comes to us courtesy of Andrea on FourSquare, the fries from the One Lounge Kitchen and Cocktail Bar in Washington DC.

French Fry Diary 465: Coney Island 2013

First off, this place is open, despite what FourSquare or Yelp may say, as of January 2013, Coney Island is most definitely open. Consider the sign from Clerks up in their window.

This time, I got the cheese fries, which is to say, the same great fries we got last time, but with a couple generous ladles of hot orange cheese on top. It's the kind of cheese that's perfect on a Philly cheesesteak. Very tasty.

I also got onion rings to see if they would be as good as the fries were last time (and this). I was not disappointed. They were made fresh, beer battered, and deep fried. They were very good hot, but as they cooled, not so much.

The hot dogs, and the price for a filling lunch, were still very good. I still have all high marks for Coney Island, I will definitely come back if it's possible.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #83

Today's Somebody Else's Fries are courtesy of my friend Andrea on the FourSquare, these breakfast potatoes are from Lucky's Coffee Shop in Delaware. Rumor has it they also have some spectacular fries as well.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #69

Here's a unique burger and fries from Pearl's Deluxe Burgers in San Francisco, image courtesy of TV Food and Drink via FourSquare.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #61

This one comes from my good friend Andrea via FourSquare, hash browns from Waffle House, that she described as "Diced and covered and awesomely tasty."

Random Tater Pic of the Day #58

Even in Hogwarts they love their fish and chips. Image courtesy of OrlandoInformer.com on FourSquare.

French Fry Diary 295: Maxx's Burgers, Shakes, & Ice Cream

I had gotten a few recommendations for Maxx's Burgers, Shakes, & Ice Cream - and since they were fairly local in Moorestown, I wanted to try it. We had tried to find this place once before, but the tiny map on their website confused us enough to give up and go to Elevation Burger. We made a mistake.

We tried again a few weeks later, using the map and looking for cross streets and driving very slow. Despite poor signage (their sign is red on white on red and shares space with a brighter All State sign), we found it. It's little, but worth it.

The first thing that hit me was the soda fountain that offered RC Cola, Diet-Rite, 7-Up and Stewart's soda products. Wow. They also had "Mexican Coke" in bottles, Coca-Cola made with sugar cane - too cool.

Everything us made from scratch and to order. Nothing was started until we ordered. We got our sodas and moved back to the depths of the place to wait for our food. It's built inside a house, so it has many rooms, and is bigger than it looks. There's a guitar and a cymbal on the wall so I suspect that this place might have once been themed after Andy Warhol's Max's Kansas City, but who knows, I saw nothing to definitely indicate that. I was happy, as I haven't had RC in a while, and I had forgotten how good it was, mmmmm...

I got my usual, a burger, and because Maxx's is the original home of Andy's Fries, I ordered them - hand cuts sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and truffle oil. Gourmet style. Maybe...

Let's do the good news first. The burgers are phenomenal, really out of this world good. The burgers are homemade killer good, and come on soft sesame seed buns. Heaven. The Mom-in-Law got the Cruncher, which was close to my heart as it was covered with Ruffles. However, it is notable that they mixed up our fry orders, that's why there are Ruffles with my Andy's Fries.

Speaking of potato products - that's the bad news. The menu tells of hand cut fries, but what I got was frozen grocer shoestrings, deep fried. They were indeed sprinkled with Parmesan and truffle oil, but still, it wasn't the same.

I won't complain too loudly or long, because the burgers were so good. Really, outside of a fancy restaurant or a backyard grill, this was the best burger I've had in a long time, and the rest of the family concurred.

We will definitely be back for the burgers, and the dollar hot dogs are very tempting especially as they have been recommended by a FourSquare friend. We had no room for dessert either after those hearty burgers, so we'll also be back for shakes, sundaes or ice cream. Maybe not for the fries however.

French Fry Diary 281: Worst. McDonald's. Ever.

On a recent trip to North Jersey we stopped at the Vauxhall Plaza McDonald's in Union NJ on the Garden State Parkway. We were hungry, needed gas, and this was convenient. This was also a big mistake.

First, because I am currently addicted to Foursquare, I had to check in, and I was rather shocked at the comments about the place, especially bad were the ones about the drive-thru - which unfortunately we were already in line. Slow, rude, sassy and belligerent were the kindest of the descriptions for the drive-thru lady. I believe however more in actual experience over word of mouth - sometimes that doesn't work out for me.

After ordering, we slowly moved up to the pay window. There was a statue of Officer Big Mac, a forgotten McDonaldland character behind bars on the passenger side. On the driver side was what could only be the woman described in the Foursquare comments. She was yelling through our car at someone we assumed was her boyfriend a hundred feet away in the parking lot. She had quite a mouth on her, and I'm talking both volume and heat, good things there were no children in the car. Luckily she didn't hit us with any spit.

We paid and got away from her as quick as possible, and soon found that order accuracy was also one of her customer service skills. Although I'm sure the rest of the staff helped in the ineptitude. We got Chicken McNuggets in lieu of a cheeseburger, frozen chocolate milk, and the fries were especially crappy, seeming much smaller than usual as if they had been refried.

To their credit, they fixed the cheeseburger mix-up when The Bride went inside, and even gave us more of those crappy fries. Wow. Still, never again, no matter how hungry we are or how much gas we need. It's no wonder Officer Big Mac is in jail. He's ashamed.