While Jollibee’s Chickenjoy has taken the world by storm and is consistently ranked as one of the best fried chicken joints around, it turns out that the Filipino fast-food chain’s french fries isn’t up to par with the quality of fries coming from its competitors.

That’s according to a power ranking of fast-food French fries published by the Los Angeles Times yesterday that placed The Bee in the bottom four.

“[T]he fries on my visit weren’t really up to snuff,” writer Lucas Kwan Peterson wrote. “They had a vaguely sweet, almost pastry-like overtone that didn’t jibe with their being otherwise fairly flat and tepid.”

Ouch.

He tried French fries from 19 different fast-food chains in the United States and judged them according to their taste and texture.

Jollibee ranked 14 spots lower than its arch nemesis, McDonald’s, which is high up at number two.

The top spot was nabbed by burger chain Five Guys, which Peterson described as a “generous heap of hot, properly salted, natural-cut spuds, with a good balance between crispy fries and the odd one that’s pleasingly soft.”

More controversial than Jollibee’s ranking, though, is that the article placed cult favorite and California icon In-N-Out at the very bottom.

“[They’re] bland, crumbly little matchsticks that aren’t improved by any amount of ketchup, salt, cheese, or salad dressing you want to add to them,” Peterson wrote.

Jollibee now has a cult following across the globe, as seen in its packed international store openings, but it’s been huge in the Philippines since the 1980s. It’s the number one fast-food chain in the country and has been beating out McDonald’s for years.

Peterson acknowledged the hype.

“I have a lot of respect for Jollibee, primarily because I enjoy the names of their products: items like the Big Yum, Chickenjoy and Jolly Spaghetti sparked a good deal of Marie Kondo-style joy in my otherwise dreary fast food existence,” he wrote.

This article, Jollibee has one of the worst fast food French fries, according to L.A. Times, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. Want more Coconuts? Sign up for our newsletters!