Features

Want fries with that?

You will when you see the way local restaurants are serving them these days

By HEATHER BOUZAN | November 29, 2006

Soft and mushy, brown and crispy, spiced and curly, slightly sweet and drowned in mayonnaise — we’ve all got our favorite kind of French fries. Whether you only go upscale or you think a Burger King drive-through will suffice, you’ll surely be impressed by the range of fry varieties available in Boston — and showcased on these pages. In fact, you might never settle for regular old thin-cuts with ketchup again.

Tater tots at Cambridge Common
1667 Mass Ave, Cambridge, 617.547.1228
$4.95/basket
Suzanne Schalow, general manager
What’s so special about your tater tots? They’re a dream from your childhood.
Why’d you put them on your menu? They’re comforting, and that’s kind of what we’re doing: really, really good comfort foods. More than anything else, they’re just very cool. They’re very retro-cool. And we all missed them tremendously from our childhoods as we began talking about fries one day — and we wanted them back. And we actually found them. It was quite a process. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that — food-wise, when you’re doing food buying — you have such a hard time trying to get. ‘What do you mean, you don’t have tater tots?’ Well, we have them now. We’ve put them back on the radar a little bit.
How are they prepared? They’re just deep-fried. Crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. That’s the key.
Do they complement anything on your menu especially well, or are they best on their own? Either way. I think people go for the baskets, go for the big share-it-as-an-appetizer, but oftentimes people get them with burgers, which is, I think, really cool as well. The sliders? You know the little mini burgers that we have? That’s my favorite way to see them, because I love the sliders so much, which are also sort of retro. I think a plate of four little mini hamburgers and tater tots, it brings out the kid in me. I smile when I see one go by, and I think, “Oh, now thatis where it is.”

Sweet-potato fries at Mr. Bartley’s Burger Cottage
1246 Mass Ave, Cambridge, 617.354.6559
$3.49/small; $4.99/large
Karen O’Shea, manager
What’s so special about your sweet-potato fries? They’re hand-cut. We make them everyday. We cook them to order, so they’re fresh, fresh, fresh.
Why’d you put them on your menu? I’ve been here for 15 years, so I think we’ve had them on for about 20 years. Mr. B. was way ahead of the curve on that. He thought that they offered something that other restaurants don’t have. They’re a little healthier, too.
Do they complement anything on your menu especially well, or are they best served on their own? They come with some of our burgers, but you can also get them with something else. Typically, we get them as an appetizer.
Which burgers are they best with? They come with the Manny Ramirez, which is blue cheese and hot sauce, and the John McCain, actually. That’s pretty popular. That’s a pizza burger with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. How are they prepared? We cut them in the morning, and then we cook them to order. They’re pretty simple. In the deep-fryer.

Poutine at Harvest
44 Brattle Street, Cambridge, 617.868.2255
$9
Keith Pooler, executive chef
Tell me about the poutine. It’s a bar-menu item? Yeah. I actually had a couple chefs come in last night and had it. It’s one of those chef kind of things. The funny story is, when I first put them on, every Canadian came in, had to have the poutine, and every single one had a comment on them. It’s a famous Canadian dish, and every [Canadian] place has it on the menu, and every place is a little bit different, so everybody has their favorite style. It’s kind of like the Lay’s potato chips. Lay’s tweaks their potato chip a little bit to accommodate different areas of the country, so that’s kind of like their version of Lay’s potato chips.
Tell me about yours. First they get fried and then they’re covered with cheese curd and baked for a little bit. And then we finish it with a little bit of chicken velouté. Traditionally, it’s usually a chicken gravy or a meat gravy that goes on it; I do chicken velouté, which is chicken stock thickened with roux. It’s a French gravy. And then we top that with a little bit of chopped scallions. One person has it at the bar, and usually you’re selling two or three more. It comes in a big bowl, and it’s good enough for two people. It’s great — you come in and have a beer and poutine, and it’ll almost fill you up.
When did you add that to your menu? That was about a month ago.
Why’d you put it on the menu? Well, I had a sous-chef that was French-Canadian, and he made it one day, because we were doing Wisconsin-style fried cheese curd, and when the cheese curd first came in, he goes, “Oh, I’ve got to make this.” And he made it and we had it one day. He did it in his way, and it evolved into the way it is now.

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