French Fry Diary 684: Post-Fantastic Four Denny's

If you're a regular listener to The GAR! Podcast, you know the dread and anticipation involved in the new Fantastic Four movie. The comic is my podcast partner Ray's favorite, and he's very protective of the FF. His feeling about the movie has the topic of many episodes (here, here, and here, including a recent one where he watched the trailer live on the recording. This past weekend, we saw it together, and then went to Denny's to record the newest episode.

Why Denny's? Because Denny's is currently featuring menu items that are Fantastic Four specific. There's the Fantastic Four Cheese Omelet, the Invisible Woman Slam (with hash browns), the hot Human Torch Skillet (with season red-skinned potatoes), the death by chocolate Doom Lava Cake, and the Thing Burger. Of special interest to readers of this blog is that last, as the Thing Burger not only comes with Denny's unique wavy-cut French fries, but also has crispy hash browns on top of the beef patty. Awesome. Like the Thing. …but what is in that 'Thing sauce'?

Anyway, the plan was for Ray and I to see the new Fantastic Four movie, and then record an episode of the podcast about it afterward… at Denny's. This is how it went right here. We both talked a good fight over a bad movie, but eventually ate none of the Fantastic Four food, although the Doom Lava Cake was darned tempting. And how come Doctor Doom gets an item and Reed Richards doesn't?

Either way, the fries were good, the staff of the Blackwood-Clementon Road Denny's was extremely cooperative, and it was a pretty good episode of the podcast too. Check it out here.

French Fry Diary 287: China 1

If your local Chinese food place has fries, get them, and if it doesn't find one that does. Usually French fries from a Chinese restaurant is a rare find, and a rare treat. When The Bride and I were still dating we frequented a wonderful little hole in the wall Chinese place in Blackwood, sadly since burned down, that had phenomenal shoestring fries, as well as a near-perfect sweet and sour sauce.

The secret is that in Chinese wok cooking, the wok is simply wiped out rather than actually cleaned. The food retains the flavor of all the food previously cooked in it. I know it sounds gross, but it works. And if French fries are cooked in a wok, yummm. It is so worth it. That's the way it was done at the place in Blackwood.

When I saw that China 1, not our regular Chinese restaurant, but one just a little further away, but one that had French fries, I knew we had to try it. The fries came in a little Styrofoam container, more familiar to diner food than Chinese food, and were simple crinkle cuts, probably frozen grocer fries that were deep-fried.

They were clearly not superior as that place in Blackwood or had any care taken with them other than a quick deep fry and dump in the Styrofoam box. It's a shame as they could have been so much better. We'll stick with our regular Chinese place, even though they don't have fries.