He has a very precise scientific mind, and in his magazine and American’s Test Kitchen he painstakingly tests and re-tests to come up with the best way to cook dishes. He loves to come up with the best way to grill burgers, roast turkeys, or this month creating the best chocolate crinkle cookies.
However, as he was tasting the fries at Marlowe, which I told him were one of my favorites in the Bay Area, he said his staff had never systematically tackled the subject. He said they had tried several methods including Joel Robuchon’s technique of starting the fries in room-temperature oil and cooking them for up to an hour. Kimball said they were good but not as crisp as he would have liked.
It got me thinking about fries. It’s one of those popular items like pizza, hamburgers and fried chicken that just about everyone loves.
I became intrigued when I realized that almost every fry I loved was cooked in rice bran oil. It has a high smoking point and delicate flavor so it produces an extra-crisp exterior but doesn’t impart any flavor, allowing the natural qualities of the tuber to emerge.
So when I was asked what my favorite fries were, it made me go back and evaluate; I realized that most are pretty good, but a perfect fry is ethereal. And while I thought I preferred versions about the same size as McDonald’s, I realized that both thick and thin versions were on my favorites list.
That said, here are my favorites. I’d love to hear yours; it will inspire me to go on a new quest, and to give us fry fanatics more places to whet the palate.
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| Nopa: The hand-cut fries, with some of the skin left on, aren't as crisp as some of the others, but they have the most intense potato flavor. |
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| Trick Dog: I generally don't like thick-cut fries, but these are the exception. They have a glass-like exterior and an interior as creamy as mashed potatoes. |
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| Marlowe: The fries are triple fried in rice bran oil, creating a clean flavor and exceptionally crisp exterior. |
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