While many diners take french fries for granted, some restaurants are now focusing on them as a main menu item. Chefs are choosing their potato variety with care and obsessing over frying fat to create the perfect fry.

America’s Love of Fries

Americans eat about 58 pounds of frozen potatoes per person per year, with roughly half of the country’s potato supply arriving frozen, mostly as fries. This has led some restaurants to build their menus around fries, with careful attention to the type of potato and frying fat used.

Some restaurants, such as Au Cheval in Chicago, Illinois, and Boise Fry Company in Idaho, are becoming known for their high-quality fries. Au Cheval’s fries are served with mornay sauce, garlic aioli, and a fried farm egg, while Boise Fry Company allows diners to customize their fries with different varieties, cuts, seasonings, and sauces.

Attention to Detail

Chefs are now treating fries as a measure of what a kitchen values, with attention to detail in the cooking process. The use of beef tallow, a rendered fat that was once commonly used for frying, has made a comeback in some restaurants, including Steak ‘n Shake, which has switched to using 100% beef tallow for its fries.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.