Random Tater Pic of the Day #25

Today's image comes from the opening scenes of the third season premiere of HBO's "Hung." Featured is Sweet Potato Sensations in Detroit, which has a variety of sweet potato sensations like pies, cakes, cheesecakes, cobblers, cookies, yams, baked sweet potatoes, ice cream and even t-shirts.

French Fry Diary 297: Jenga Fries

These snazzily stacked fries came from Sazon Restaurant & Café, a Venezuelan restaurant in Philadelphia as Papas Fritas. The Dark Crystal took my buddy Ray there and they sent me this great pic. Thanks for the Somebody Else's Fries pic, folks!

French Fry Diary 296: Zinc Café

This is where we went for The Bride's birthday this year. She had a late night at work and then a Pineland Players meeting so we had to schedule dinner in a tight schedule and also do it somewhere in Medford so we would have time. I got online with Urbanspoon with my iPhone and found the Zinc Café, a place with perfect timing and location that we all agreed on.

The Zinc Café is kinda tucked away on Stokes Road, so if you don't know where it is, you might miss it, but you'll also be missing out on one of the best local restaurants around too. This was a rare find indeed. It's a little small, but you can also eat outside. It's cozy, and a little dim, but it's great atmosphere. Small town meets fancy coffee shop, friendly and cool, I liked it a lot.

The menu has an amazing selection, both healthy and bad for you, both simple and exotic. No Coca-Cola products but they had Boylan instead. My cane cola was a welcome change of pace. They also had appetizers of thin crispy breadsticks that tasted like matzo, very addictive. I could have been happy just with the soda and the sticks.

The Bride and her mom got salads with some amazing add-ins, and we were all surprised by the crisp, fresh and colorful vegetables. The Bride got a grilled cheese sandwich (it's what she wanted for her birthday) with a few cheeses I couldn't pronounce. I got a burger (surprise), which was just terrific, and of course, with the burger were fries.

The French fries were natural cut shoestrings, another sign of high class, at least by this fry guy's estimation. They were very crispy, and had a certain kick we couldn't quite identify, but it was a good kick. All in all, it was a wonderful experience. I really think I have found a new favorite restaurant.

Neely's Spicy Sweet Potato Chips

Today's Food Network Fridays focuses on Pat and Gina Neely and their recipe for Spicy Sweet Potato Chips from the "Lunch Break" episode of "Down Home with the Neelys."



You can see the full recipe here. Enjoy!

Random Tater Pic of the Day #24

Not really a tater pic today but I wanted to record a cooking triumph for myself, and as we do cover the favorite fried food's cousin, the Onion Rings, here occasionally, this does fit. I have been trying to make onion rings from scratch for years, but I never seem to get the dredging and battering part right. This time I did, and here they are, my mostly perfect homemade onion rings. Enjoy, I know I did.

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 294: Safeway Barbecue Potato Chips

The first thing that attracted me to this store brand of chips at Gennuardi's was the unique art on the front of it. Gracing the front of the 10.5 oz. bag of Safeway Barbecue Flavored Potato Chips is a gigantic chip with a bull Magic Marker-ed over it, and signed by the Snack Artist TM.

The gigantic chip kinda unnerved me. At the bottom of the bag it said "Product Enlarged to Show Texture." It made me compare real chips to pic for a while, just to check out the "texture." I never thought to notice the texture if potato chips before.

The bag continued to amaze when I realized it had one of those special resealable zipper seals. The problem of course is that the opening is in the top front of the bag, instead of the more logical, more reasonable top of the bag. If nothing else, it makes it more difficult to get the chips out - and really, getting the chips out is goal one for a potato chip bag.

The chips themselves are pretty standard for store brand, similar to Herr's gold foil potato chips. They're good, if you can get them out if the bag...

Sour Gummi Fries

These Sour Gummi Fries, from the Gummy Zone, might be something that ends up in your (or your kids') Trick or Treat bags today and tonight for Halloween.

That kinda leaves me sour myself. If you're going to give French fries out to the Treat-or-Treaters, give gift certificates to your favorite restaurant. Just a hunch, you probably won't get your windows soaped that way.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #23

These are so-called "Jo-Jo Potato" fries from Cheska's Deli at the Berlin Farmer's Market (known to the locals as the Berlin Auction). They appear to be batter-fried potato wedges with an option for cheese.

Cheska's Deli specializes in chicken and "bar b-q" ribs. Down the market from Cheska's Deli are two different Cheska's Snack Bars, which have deep-fried crinkle cut fries. I've never tried any of them, maybe someday, but for now, just not in the stars... or the fries.

French Fry Diary 293: Bill's Bar & Burger, Harrah's, Atlantic City

I was intrigued when I heard that this place, Bill's Bar & Burger, was coming to Harrah's in Atlantic City. BB&B actually has a pretty interesting reputation up in New York, and I was looking forward to trying out their burgers, and especially their fries. Until, of course, I found out that that it would be replacing The Deli.

The Deli was a place I could almost twenty-four hours a day while The Bride was playing the slots. I could go, and get some lunch (or whatever meal), hang out, and write. If I got fries, it would come in an over-generous portion of terrific hot steak fries, less if I got a hot dog with it, even though I'd be charged the same price. It was a good deal, and a good place - and good fries. The Deli will be missed. But I'm open-minded, I'll give Bill a shot.

I hate to say it, but at first glance, I was unimpressed. Indicative of a restaurant in a casino, it looks nice but the food is not so hot, and crazy expensive - more expensive than The Deli. For example, the six-dollar milkshake came in a cup slightly bigger than a McDonald's small soft drink. And the sodas (notably all Pepsi products, rather than Coca-Cola) in the same size cup cost four dollars.

I ordered a burger (come on, guys, what else would I order?), and it was very good, very juicy on a soft sesame seed bun. All burgers come cooked medium, but you can get them done more if you desire. I'm not a big fan of rare, but it does kinda bug me when it's not an option. I understand not wanting to make anyone sick, but to me that sorta reflects a distrust of the cook by management, don't you think? Anyway, the burger was pricey, but definitely worth that price, and worth coming back for, I thought.

The fries however, were another story, and it should be noted that they came separate from the burger, not with it, an unusual practice. They were undercooked natural cut spicy potato wedges, some of them thinner than usual, but unusually not crispy. They were good, soft and hot on the inside, but without the crispy crunch most potato wedges have. They also came with cheddar whiz cheese, or as disco fries, but I didn't try them.

They weren't horrible, I ate them and enjoyed them, but didn't finish them. They were however disappointing, especially when compared to the gigantic portion size The Deli would have provided, and I would have eaten all of those delicious steak fries. Bill's also has beer battered onion rings, which were typical of beer battered - greasy. Sweet potato fries were also available as well, maybe next time, when I get another burger.