On National French Fry Day, C&B Rate the Best

BUCK: I have some food weaknesses. We talked a little bit about this yesterday. You know, I’m gonna be, at some point here, Clay, probably… I guess I don’t walk down the aisle ’cause I’m the guy, but I’ll be at the end of the aisle, right, to go through this whole thing but you want to look your best, right, try to maybe knock off some of the weight.

CLAY: Do you have a set weight that you’re gonna try to hit for the wedding?

BUCK: Ahhh, I mean, basically 10 down from where I am right now, I’d be pretty psyched.

CLAY: The photos will exist forever; so women obviously in their wedding dresses, there’s a lot of fitness-related decisions made surrounding weddings. Guys don’t want to look super chubby, necessarily, in the tuxedo. A tuxedo is not flattering for a chubby guy anyway, right?

BUCK: I think the cummerbunds can be somewhat slimming a little bit, maybe.

CLAY: Like hide it?

BUCK: I think probably more so than the suspenders. By the way, I’m not doing a black tie. A lot of people do black tie weddings. Not doing a black tie wedding. It’s not my thing. But then you gotta think about, “What are your food weaknesses?” I will say the things that I have to be… I think I might even qualify… I wouldn’t say it’s a full-on addiction to chocolate, but I do have a chocolate stash at home. But you convince yourself high-quality dark chocolate — little piece of it here, little piece of it there — no big deal. The thing that I know I have to cut back on as part of hit my macros and all that, Clay, National French Fry Day.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And french fries are the thing… For some people, it’s ice cream. For other people, it’s I don’t know.

CLAY: Peanut butter is really popular with a lot of people, chocolate.

BUCK: Chocolate, peanut butter. But for me, man, I can put away a thousand calories of french fries without batting an eyelash.

CLAY: What’s your go-to? If you can order french fries from anywhere, that’s not some small New York City deli that everybody could get, you would order them from where?

BUCK: Oh, man. The problem with me is, I can’t eat McDonald’s french fries — which I used to love — because their french fries are generally gluten-free, although there’s cross-contamination in the fryer because they usually deep fry other items that have flour. I live on the edge, Clay. I will accept, as a celiac, cross-contamination on my french fries, but McDonald’s fries actually use gluten as one of the ingredients.

Which is very disappointing ’cause McDonald’s fries, I think, ’cause I used to eat McDonald’s, are the best products that they have overall. I think their fries are better than their burgers, I think their fries are better than their nuggets, but I can’t eat them anymore. If you’re asking me the best fries? I’m kind of a Shake Shack devotee at this point. I love Shake Shack fries and burgers. That’s what I like.

CLAY: Those are good. Those are really good. I would go Wendy’s, and this may be a little bit under the radar. There may be people out there, record-scratch moment. You’re going with Wendy’s fries. I love Wendy’s fries. Other question on fries. Do you like steak fries, like, the normal-size fries or the skinny fries or maybe even the curly fries — There’s an Arby’s curly fry — or waffle fry, like Chick-fil-A has.

BUCK: So yes. I grew up going to a place, my burger place growing up was a neighborhood joint that’s very well known in New York City called JG Melon. It’s on the Upper East Side.

CLAY: Yep.

BUCK: They had waffle fries there that are perfect for scooping up their chili. I was never a waffle fry guy until I tried theirs. Waffle fries, when done well, I will say are my second favorite. I’m a classics guy, though. I like the standard french fry, the pomme frite, if you will, French style. But they changed at Melon. After 35 years, they told me they had to change their potato supplier so they changed their waffle fries to be dined that almost look like a crosshatch, you know what I mean? There’s, like, a different… Oh, they’re like the ones you get from Chick-fil-A.

CLAY: Yeah. That’s a waffle fry but not —

BUCK: Yeah, they look so. It’s a different design, if you will, of the fry.

CLAY: Yeah. I would go with the Wendy’s fries, but the Chick-fil-A waffle fries are pretty phenomenal.

BUCK: Why Wendy’s over McDonald’s fries? ‘Cause you can eat everything.

CLAY: I just… I’ve always liked the Wendy’s fries better than the McDonald’s fries, and I can’t explain why exactly that is.

BUCK: Do you put ketchup on them like an American, or are you European like me who puts mayo on?

CLAY: I am a ketchup obsessive. I also… This might factor in with why I like Wendy’s. They let you do your own ketchup or at least they used to. I haven’t been in a Wendy’s in a while. But they have the little ketchup holders, and you get to squirt the ketchup yourself, you know, out of the self-serve if you’re eating in the Wendy’s. That, to me, is a pretty nice addition to be able to have. But I use ketchup like crazy. If I’m in a restaurant I tell ’em, “Hey, bring me a couple of more tubs of your ketchup so I can make sure I get through all my french fries.”

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: How many people listening to us, Buck, now are going to get french fries that were not going to get french fries if we hadn’t done this topic?

BUCK: I feel like I’m doing people a disservice if they’re trying to cut down a little bit on the daily caloric intake. French fries. There are very few things that if they’re there I will eat them. It doesn’t matter. If you put warm, delicious french fries in front of me, I’m going to eat them. So I have to, if I order food — let’s say, if I order delivery or something — I have to say, “Don’t bring them,” ’cause even if I tell myself, “Oh, I’ll only have a few,” it never happens that way. I end up having far too many.

CLAY: That’s another test is, if you drive through and pick them up, what is the thing that you pick up that you never actually make it home with the food still there? For me, it’s Chick-fil-A. If I go through the drive-through at Chick-fil-A and I pick it up, I end up eating all of the fries and all of the Chick-fil-A sandwich before I even get home with the rest of the food because I just can’t even sit there. You can’t eat one, and once you take a bite you’re like I might as well go ahead and finish it.

BUCK: And I do have a complaint about a restaurant chain that I otherwise just absolutely love, which is In-N-Out Burger. For our Texas and California listeners, I think they have it in Nevada, too, now, some other places out West. I know they have — I’ve been to them in California and Texas. In-N-Out Burger burgers are amazing. Their french fries need to be a little bit better. The french fries just aren’t very good, which I don’t understand. That is such an essential, right? You need to have, if you’re running a fast food burger joint, those crispy, delicious, amazing french fries. Their french fries are a little soggy, a little Styrofoam tasting. Not so good. It killed me to say it ’cause I love their burgers.

CLAY: There’s also a consistency factor, right? When you analyze a good french fry, we all know that the food never looks like the menu picture. Right, you look at the menu picture and you’re like, man, or television commercial, like, that is the greatest-looking burger ever. What you get typically never it looks like that but there’s sometimes a wide variety of inconsistency in the quality of the french fry.

BUCK: You know, my brother owns a gluten-free baked goods company. And one thing that he’s come across, you find this all over the food industry, a lot of people — they don’t do this, but there are a lot of people — who in food ads use things that aren’t actually in the food to make it look a certain way, right? So they’ll replace their gravy with coffee or something, and they’ll just do things to bring out the colors more to make it look better. That’s not even actually necessarily the food that you’re eating. That’s very common.

CLAY: Yeah, that’s interesting (laughing), and I always think that. The one that used to be the best, remember when they had…? Was it Jack’s? Who was it that had…? No, Carl’s Jr. had the smoking hot girls eating hamburgers, like that was their advertisement for a while. Do you remember that on television? The burger never looked that good as when… I think they had Jessica Simpson and they had, like, Padma Lakshmi and they had like a bunch of different really good-looking women — maybe one of the Kardashians at one point — eating a burger, and it always looked like the greatest burger you’ve ever seen. I don’t know what they do to make it look so good.

BUCK: I’ve already had lunch, but I’m hungry.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: So, apparently, we’re gonna go get some french fries in celebration of National French Fry Day, and we thank you for hanging out with us. Tomorrow we’re gonna have a whole lot more to talk to you about. Remember, go to ClayAndBuck.com, become VIP subscribers. Send us some emails. You can send Clay your thoughts on his french fry discussion.

CLAY: Steak fries: Underrated too.

BUCK: We didn’t even get into steak fries. Quite good. Waffle fries are more my jam, though.