Fast-food french fries — all of them — are a face-feeding menace of the fat-American diet, a wasteland of processed, (barely) edible matter which millions mistake for cheap.
So I was surprised to almost tolerate Burger King’s new Satisfries, which cost slightly more than the chain’s regular fries. Boasting 30 percent fewer calories and 40 percent less fat, they’re 25 percent less stomach-churning than the old ones.
They even distantly taste — OMG — of potatoes.
More important, they feel 100 percent better on the tongue. It’s not only due to their crinkle-cut shape, but to whatever mystery agent they use in frying to reduce oil absorption. It somehow makes their surface crisper, as if they had a skin.
There’s nothing “light” about the Satisfries’ fat and calorie-reduction. A handful will leave anyone with a normal waistline feeling as bloated as the old kind did. But mouth feel has improved: the new fries retained their tactility after cooling, while competing products turned to leaden lumps in seconds.
Putting up with Satisfries is a relative thing. I wouldn’t eat any fast-food fries if my editors hadn’t marched me out of the office with “taste or starve” orders for the day.
Whatever the brand, they’re all mainly greasy, doughy vehicles for ketchup, which I refrained from using so as to better discern their unadulterated essence — which in every case was a lot more salt than spud.
At least Satisfries whip the stale oil off McDonald’s feeble “World Famous Fries” and Wendy’s “Natural-Cut Sea Salt Fries,” which taste of midnight desperation at any hour.
Of course, if Burger King is really serious about “satisfying” customers with slightly less unhealthy choices, it can start by slenderizing its other, even more obnoxious products.
But don’t hold your breath — if you have any left after washing down a a 1,550-calorie Triple Whopper Sandwich with a 510-calorie Caramel Frappe.