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DELICIOUS OR SUSPICIOUS: Wendy's Natural Cut Fries with Sea Salt
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DELICIOUS OR SUSPICIOUS: Wendy’s Natural Cut Fries with Sea Salt
I’m not proud to admit it, but I wound up at Wendy's last night. Do not ask how or why; I plead the fifth. Circling the 24th and Oregon drive-through in the neighborhood of 11:30, a blazing yellow sign reminded me about Wendy’s new fries, “natural cut” (skin-on) and showered with sea salt. They're called "Real Fries." Which begs the question: What were we being served before?
As a kid who went to birthday parties at McDonald’s (we all did that in the ‘90s, right?) and stashed packs of extra sweet-and-sour sauce in fridge at home, Wendy’s always seemed like a slightly less horrible-for-you version of the Golden Arches. You could get a baked potato. Topped with broccoli and Cheese Whiz. And I remember liking their chili. My brother and I used to beg my parents to let us sit in the smoked-glass solarium hooked to the front of the old Front Street Wendy’s like a prefab addition to a doublewide trailer. As a 6-year-old nugget connoisseur, I preferred Wendy’s to Mickey D's (more white meat, zestier coating) — but the fries paled, literally, in comparison.
Wendy's fries were always texturally squishy and wan in taste, like a McDonald’s fry run through flavor-degrading Xerox machine six or seven times. These new natural-cuts solve the textural problem; mine were hot and crispy, splotched with papery brown potato skin. But the sea salt (500 milligrams of it — 150 more than the old version, according to CBS Health) is foodie pandering at its worst. Sea salt is still salt. Actually, it's saltier than typical iodized table salt, so you need much less, a memo that has yet to funnel down to 24th Street from corporate. And if you’re expecting big glassy flakes of Maldon (I don't know why I was), you’ll be disappointed with the fries' fine-grained fleur, the kind that keeps company with light-spoiled olive oil and busted Barefoot Contessa brownie boxes on the discount cooking racks at Ross.
So of course, I took one bite of these so-called Real Fries, recoiled in disgust and threw them in the trash, right? No. I ate them all, a whole medium-sized container, 420 calories, and enjoyed them in my moment of hunger and weakness. These gripes are retrospective, and Real Fries are clearly suspicious. Though had you asked me last night, my answer might have been different.
i hope you're an unpaid intern— main liner- I've had the new Wendy's fries a few times now, and they're pretty good. Outside of Five Guys, they're probably the best Fast Foot fries you can get right now.— HazmatCorntail
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