French Fry Diary 613: Birthday Goodies

I have a pretty important landmark birthday coming up later this week, and I wanted to talk about freebies, specifically birthday freebies from fast food and chain restaurants. For the sake of the blog here, I'm on an awful lot of email lists for these restaurants so of course I'm on their birthday list as well. I should add that there's a substantial lack of the favorite fried food for free.

Denny's is the granddaddy of these bad boys with their free Grand Slam breakfast on your birthday. You get two eggs, two pancakes, two sausage links, two slices of bacon - but no breakfast potatoes or hash browns. Sad. IHoP goes one better with a free breakfast that might just include hash browns.

Friendly's will give you a three scoop sundae, Dairy Queen does a Blizzard, Chili's a brownie sundae, and Cold Stone Creamery, Baskin-Robbins, Rita's Water Ice, and Ben and Jerry's all have ice cream in a cone or cup. Also in the cold club are Smashburger and Zinburger with milkshakes, and P.F. Chang and Outback both get you free dessert.

Sonic, Charlie Brown's, Red Lobster, Famous Dave's, Moe's Southwest Grill, Qdoba, and Fuddruckers play it safe and mysterious by saying you're just get a free gift. Maybe it's a watch? Hmmm… all I wanted was fries… Don Pablo's goes right for the wallet with the lazy birthday tact of a gift card.

Red Robin rules with not just a free burger, but also a side of those bottomless fries. Houlihan's gets you a free entrée, Johnny Rockets a free burger, and my friends at Cool Dog Café are good for a free hot dog. Hmmm… I'm thinking Cool Dog for lunch maybe and then Red Robin for dinner…

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.

French Fry Diary 401: Wildfire BBQ Co.

The Wildfire BBQ Co. is built on the site of the old Stratford Friendly's on the White Horse Pike. I remember that I went to dinner for my sixth grade graduation there, and also one of my first dates as well, but it's not a Friendly's any more. The new restaurant has been there about eight months. Once I walked in I was struck by how much smaller it was than the old Friendly's but then, I just kinda fell in love with the place. I like the decor, it's very warm and cozy, a rocker biker vibe, all from the owner's home.

Our waitress Melanie was on skates and well beyond helpful and friendly. Her roller derby name is Rabbit. Coolness. She knew everything about the restaurant and the food. Before we even looked at the menu I was happy.

For our appetizer, we got the Wildfire Fries - French fries with melted cheese, smoked bacon, sliced cherry peppers (yikes!) and BBQ sauce. This had both regular fries and sweet potato fries in there, good combination. The bacon was perfect and the sauce sweet and hot. The banana peppers added a bit of a kick flavor-wise, and I was told by Melanie this was the regular BBQ sauce. Now I'm a bit worried, I ordered the hot for my meal.

The soda size (Coca-Cola products, so that's a plus) is terrific, and you'll need it to put out the fire of the Wildfire Fries. I went through several glasses of Coke fighting the heat of my buffalo sauce. Our friends got the Twice Baked Taters, very loaded, very cool. Quite a treat.

The fries are natural regular cuts, probably deep fried, well salted and quite good. The real thing here is the dipping sauces. The regular sauce I liked quite a bit. The hot was a bit hotter, but still good for me. The buffalo wing sauce is burning hot, and gets hotter over time. That's the one that was killing me. The Melt My Face BBQ sauce is like the wing sauce but made me sweat. Sooo good but sooo hot.

I really loved this place. The owner does everything onsite and all of the sauces are his formula. We have also heard that they do an awesome breakfast, so we will be back for that, and for more lunch and dinner as well.  This place rocks, highly recommended.

French Fry Diary 132: Champps Americana, Marlton NJ

There has been a Champps within throwing distance of my home for over a decade, but I had never been there until a couple weeks back with a couple friends, Ken and Marni, both old pros when it comes to accompanying me on French Fry Diary expeditions. We also received a gift card in the mail that day - probably the only reason we went. It was that or Red Lobster that night. I kinda wish we'd gone to the Dead Lobster now...

Champps Americana appears at first glance to be a downscale cross between a Friendly's and a sports bar, and at the time we visited, dinner on a weeknight, the crowd seemed rather sparse. But you'd never know it from the service.

Upon perusing the menu I saw, that while other plates passing by showed Chick-fil-A-like waffle fries, Champps in fact had a choice of either waffle fries or steak fries. After quizzing the waitress I was told that I could not get both, a half and half selection of the two different kinds of fries. Curious. It had to be one or the other. Were the fries cooked to order in specific side-sized portions or was the waitress just stubborn? You decide.

The waffle fries as I said resembled those at Chick-fil-A but maybe smaller and perhaps with a splash of seasoning - but I'll never know. I was extorted into choosing, or ordering two complete portions of fries. I, feeling almost at gunpoint, ordered the steak fries.

We also ordered onion rings as an appetizer. I figured, get as much done as possible, because at this point, I was probably not coming back. The rings were big battered slices with lots of thick onion, in different sizes and very hot, served with a honey mustard sauce. These were actually very good, and the large size of the onion was a nice change of pace you don't see in many places.

The stubborn waitress turned inattentive waitress as we waited for our main course. I had an empty glass for most of the meal. She eventually came through late late in the game. Maybe I had ticked her off by asking about the fries. She didn't seem to want to get me any refills on my Coke 'til the meal was almost over.

The steak fries were slightly slimmer than regular steak fries and also natural cuts. There were also only warm, so they definitely could not have been cooked to order. These fries were soggy, a little greasy and seasoned unevenly. Not spectacular, like the only adequate burger, which was also only warm. A big disappointment. What am I going to do with this gift card now? I'm so not going back...

French Fry Diary 88: Friendly’s Fry Flashback

This is actually a review from almost a decade ago when Friendly’s Family Restaurant had good fries. The concept for this blog has been on my mind for a long time and I’ve been writing these things for a while, and unfortunately sometimes they become outdated. But just because Friendly’s has horrible fries now doesn’t mean they always did, so let’s hop in the wayback machine and take a peek into the past…

Friendly Fries sneak up on you. You think they’re just a side dish but after three or four trips to Friendly’s –who just for the record have really good food and desserts- you’ll be going back just for the fries. And ordering the large order too, a big whopping plate piled with fries.

Friendly Fries, as they are called, from the Friendly’s Family Restaurant franchise, are regular cuts and sometimes quite long, always golden brown, never greasy and usually crispy. These are some of the best fries around. Recommended.

Ah, yeah, those were the good old days. For a look at the current state of Friendly Fries, click here. Officially un-recommended.

French Fry Diary 41: Friendly’s Family Restaurant

I haven’t been to a Friendly’s Family Restaurant in quite some time, due to a difference of opinion regarding what constitutes a non-smoking section. In other words, the non-smoking section should not be a row of booths in the very center of the restaurant where everything else is a smoking section. That just doesn’t work. And considering that NJ restaurants have been smoke-free for quite some time – that should tell you how long it’s been since I’ve been to a Friendly’s.

Now onto what we’re here for today, the favorite fried food. In the past, maybe a decade or two back, Friendly Fries (and I believe they may have been trademarked at one point) were among the best available at family restaurant franchises. Thin regular cuts, but not thin enough to be shoestrings, were hot, crisp, tasty and quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, those days and those fries are long gone.

What Friendly’s now offers are what diners used to have before the advent of Invisicoat – greasy, sub-standard regular cuts. Adequate, but then again, often not. The quality and the consistency have vanished. Nobody who liked fries is going to Friendly’s for fries anymore.

Also in the potato arena, Friendly’s has the “Jumbo Fronions and Waffle Fries” with onion rings and seasoned waffle cut potato wedges. The ones I tried were overdone and the seasoning left an unwanted aftertaste. The onion rings were thick - but not thick enough to merit being called thick – and otherwise unspectacular. This again is sad, as twenty years ago Friendly’s had the best onion rings – thin and crisp, just right. And ten years ago they had the Frunions (sp?), which were tasty and spicy onion straws (gone as well). One serving of those was enough for a meal in itself – but this sampler is barely enough for one, and definitely not for two.

Friendly’s is not a complete disaster though. The ice cream is still excellent and they still have those great large (very large) Cokes, as long as they don’t over-ice the glass. But then again, what am I really saying if I say Friendly’s has really good Coke, ya know? The service was less than pleasant, but that’s true of many places. Suffice it to say, if you want fries, drive past Friendly’s.

The Only Thing Better than French Fries?

There was a time when my various medical conditions prevented me from being as intimate with the favorite fried food as I might have wanted to be. For all its glory, and much to the joy of the Health Nazis, the French fry is not necessarily the most healthy food on the planet. When this happened I turned to another fried food, one also made from a much-maligned vegetable, but one I could actually eat at that time - The Onion Ring!

Onion rings aren't really that bad of a second stringer either. And in some cases, like at Friendly's, and especially at Cheeburger Cheeburger, they are much more superior to their French fry counterparts on the menu.

Here's a great recipe for the o-ring from College Candy. Check it out here.


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