One day last decade, I ate seven orders of French fries in a single day.
One day this week, I ate five, which was enough to remind me why seven’s a bad idea, but not enough to make me regret a refresher on some of downtown’s worthiest fries.
I started at Shah’s, where the price alone might prompt contented sighs of pleasure. $3.49 for an order of fries is the lowest I can recall since the start of Covid-flation—cheaper than even a medium at Burger King—and paying it got me a pretty big portion. Served in a paper sack, the fries were, on the scale of a Barbie Brooklyn Dreamhouse, as thick as a loft-style condo’s post-industrial beams, albeit soft and mushy and totally non-load-bearing. The beams here could have been crispier and more decisively seasoned, but they were still a good value and, to my taste, better than a lot of more expensive options I’ve tried nearby.
My second stop was The Trinity, where a basket of equally thick fries, technically off-menu, costs an even better $4—better because the portion was even bigger while checking more boxes: skin-on, crispy outside, well-salted, not too oily. Cut pretty thickly, they were excellent both alone and with ketchup, and, as I can say from past experience, they would’ve gone great with a beer. They were nice to look at, too, finished with a dusting of dried parsley and served in a play on a frying basket.
Next up was Icaru, where my hopes were set high given the prominence of fries in modern Peruvian cooking. Icaru’s, priced at $8, were the thickest of the day, but it was their super creamy interior and wonderfully chewy exterior, imbued with caramelized flavor and the browning to match, that really set them apart. Having forgotten to ask, I can’t say whether an included dipping sauce came with the fries or the (much less impressive) yuca I also ordered. But I can say the sauce was yummy—bright, creamy, herbaceous.
Crossing downtown, I then visited Florian, where the definitely included sauce, a potent lemon aioli, gave the restaurant’s Belgian Frites ($8) a gourmet, tangy, almost magically desserty quality. The fries themselves, cut medium-slender, were earthy, unctuous and soft: pillowy potato cased in a light linen crisp. Tossed with just a touch of flake salt, they could’ve used a touch more in places, though diners dipping into that brisk aioli wouldn’t need any seasoning at all.
Finally, I went to Nice Day Chinese for an order of the Sichuan Fries ($5.99). These were the day’s thinnest, sized at the high end of “matchstick,” and fried to just the right outer crisp. But it was their beautifully red and complicated spice blend—hot, musky, savory, funky, sweet, meaty, smoky—that defined them. The chili heat lingered on and on, and eating the fries in the customary way, with hands, was a messy enterprise.
If also, even so many fries in, a delicious one.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. Image 1 features fries at The Trinity. Image 2 features the Sichuan Fries from Nice Day Chinese.
