Three Ways We Do Fries, and the One That Started as a Joke

Fries are the easiest thing on any menu to phone in. Everybody has them, nobody has to think about them, and most places open a bag.

We make ours, and we do three versions of them. One is a joke that worked, one is a full plate pretending to be a side, and one you finish yourself at the table.

The reason any of them are worth writing about is not the toppings.

The Boring Part That Matters

The potatoes get salt brined, washed three times, and fried twice.

The washing is the step people skip. It pulls surface starch off, and surface starch is what makes a fry go soggy the moment anything wet touches it. If you are going to put sauce and mayonnaise on a fry, that fry has to be built to survive it.

The double fry is standard technique and does two separate jobs. The first, lower-temperature pass cooks the inside through without colouring it. The second, hotter pass sets the shell. That is how you get fluffy in the middle and properly crisp outside rather than one or the other.

None of that shows up on the menu. All of it is why the loaded ones do not collapse into a pile halfway through.

The Okonomiyaki Fries Were Meant to Be a Joke

Okonomiyaki is the Osaka savoury pancake, cabbage and batter griddled and then dressed. The dressing is the recognisable part: the sweet-savoury brown sauce, mayonnaise, and katsuobushi on top.

I know it well from both ends. When I lived at Sakura House in Harajuku there was an okonomiyaki place around the corner called Sakurate that I ate at constantly. And my first restaurant job, Oco Time, the one where I started as a dishwasher, was a Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki restaurant. So I have made a lot of it and eaten more.

People had been asking us to put it on the menu for years, and the answer was always no, because it is not a thing you can want your way into. Okonomiyaki needs a flat top and it needs floor space we do not have. There was nowhere to put it.

Then one night somebody asked again, and I decided to be a bit of a smartarse about it. I went to the back, threw down some fries, and put shredded cabbage, cheese, corn, okonomiyaki sauce, Kewpie mayo, scallions and bonito flakes on top of them.

I sent it out more or less as a joke.

It was fantastic. So it went on the menu, where it has been ever since.

Why It Actually Works

This is the part I did not plan and would not have predicted.

With real okonomiyaki, the best bite is the crispy edge. Everybody knows this. You eat toward the perimeter, and the middle is softer and less interesting by comparison.

Fries are all edge. Every single bite has crunch in it, because there is no middle. The joke version accidentally solved the one thing about okonomiyaki that is a compromise.

People are visibly confused when they see it on the menu. They order it once and then they keep ordering it.

The bonito flakes do the thing they always do, which is move. They are shaved thin enough that the heat coming off the plate makes them curl and wave, and it never stops being a little unsettling to watch.

It can be made vegetarian, which mostly means leaving the bonito off.

The Loaded Fries Are Poutine With the Wrong Passport

These exist because I wanted poutine and could not get any.

There was nowhere near us doing it, and rather than travel for it I threw what we had on our fries and ate that instead. It was not an homage and there was no concept. There was a craving and a walk-in.

It was a hit, so it stayed. Two versions, and both are a full plate rather than a side.

One is topped with karaage, our fried chicken. The other is kakuni, braised long and slow. Then melted cheese, spicy mayo and pickled jalapenos.

One thing worth knowing if you have eaten both: this is not the same pork as the kakuni we serve as a dish. That one is belly, which is what kakuni means. For the fries we braise shoulder instead. Same treatment, different cut, because a pile of belly under melted cheese on fried potato is more fat than anyone needs in one direction.

The jalapenos are the part that makes it work. Braised pork and melted cheese on fried potato is a lot of rich all pointing the same direction, and something sharp and acidic has to cut across it or you stop halfway through.

Order these to share or order them instead of a dish. They are not a side for a person who has also ordered dinner.

Shake Shake Fries

These come in a bag with a seasoning packet and instructions printed in manga panels. Fries in, seasoning in, close it, shake it.

Two seasonings: wasabi, which is the one that took off online, and shiso, which is tarter and more herbal and the one I would order second.

That dish took the most work of anything here and none of the work is visible, so it has its own post. The short version is that the hard part was not the flavour. It was getting the seasoning to stay on the potato.

What to Drink With Them

Beer, and it does not need to be complicated. A cold lager against salt and fat is not a pairing anybody needs help with.

If you want something with a bit more going on, a highball works, because the carbonation does the same job the beer does and cuts through the mayo.

All three are on the menu.