Fast Food Review: Seasoned Fries from Bojangles’

Posted September 23rd, 2011 | 3:37pm by Adam

Typically speaking, there have been very few french fries I’ve ever disliked.

A quick perusal of the GrubGrade fry/rings/sides archives speaks to this, although my last french fry review (of Checkers’ cult-like status fries) left a lot to be desired. Thankfully, those horribly oily, destructively salty spuds led to some interesting comments after I reviewed them. Among the comments were several calls to try the seasoned fries at Bojangles’, which faithful reader Raiders757 proclaimed to be addicting enough to warrant an intervention. Almost, actually, but considering he was denying this addiction, I felt he was actually understating his potentially dangerous need to consume these fries.

Further investigation, you could say, was in order. So even though it was a whopping 7:21 in the morning when I rolled into Bojangles’ on a recent road trip, I decided to pass the combo action of “Bo-tato” rounds and swing for the fences with the seasoned fries. Just to be consistent, I skipped the coffee and went with a Dr. Pepper – although diet, of course.

Initial points right out of the gate for offering french fries on their breakfast menu. I wish McDonald’s would do this, as there’s nothing worse than ordering a Chicken Biscuit combo only to get a over-fried hunk of hash brown with it. Also initial points for throwing any sense of serving size out the window. As you can see, the employee loading the fries essentially tripled the amount of fries you’d think could fit into the small paper sleeve, providing a picture perfect example for why trusting website nutrition information is anything but accurate. But who was I kidding? You give me a pile of fries and I am going to eat them. All of them.

I seriously could not get enough of these fries. I seldom enjoy steak fries with the same vigor of what I like to call “normal” fries, but the thick fries were abundantly seasoned with a salty and sweet blend that I’m pretty sure included copious amounts of MSG, garlic, and superfine sugar. There’s a slight note of heat and a strong inkling of black pepper, two flavors which recall happy days of my chowing down on the seasoned fries at TGI Friday’s during Friday evenings of my youth. The seasoning, I thought, was what Rally’s/Checker’s aspired their fries to be like, and I found myself craving the Cajun-inspired flavors so much that I hardly gave my collection of ketchup packets a second thought.

All that said, there were some textural irregularities with the fries. Flavor-wise they’re great, but they’re not as crisp on the exterior as I’d like. Being steak fries it’s somewhat expected, but what wasn’t expected was the lack of potato flavor that came through. While roughly 1/3rd of the fries seemed perfectly cooked and displayed moist and fluffy interiors, others were positively hollow on the inside. It’s not a deal breaker per se — especially because the greasy exteriors make licking the spice blend so wonderfully enticing in a horrible-for-you fast food kind of way — but at the same time, it causes you to examine what you really want in a fry. Great seasoning and addicting snackability aside, I do want that fluffy interior with the natural earthy sweetness of the potato. If Bojangles’ fries could have delivered that consistently, they might have challenged McDonald’s for my favorite fast food fries.