What condiment...

[angus]

Copious amounts of mayonnaise.

[angus]

My friend Mike used to polish off his fries BEFORE even getting into the burger at all when we used to get high in his basement and go to Wendy's at 1:30 in the morning.  

One must always consume all the fries at places like BK and McDonald's before unwrapping the sandwich or other entrée.  I don't know what the specific heat content of french fries are, but apparently it is less than the materials which comprise the burger, and there's really nothing less appealing than room-temperature Burger King fried potatoes.  I usually eat those stringy fries in handfuls of three or four at a time and polish off the package in less than 60 seconds.  Only then do I take the time to unwrap and consume the sandwich.

Also, at Burger Kings outside the USA it is rather difficult to get mayonnaise, so just take them naked.  (In Latin America you can usually get some aqueous solution of vinegar and chili powder that passes for "salsa picante" in BK, and in the Far East you can usually find some combination of soya and dark vinegar, both of which are okay in a pinch, when there's no mayonnaise, but really, if there's no mayonnaise, you might as well eat them naked.)  Fortunately, BK employees are trained to apply liberal amounts of salt to the fries as soon as they're scooped from the vat of hot oil, so they're not bad naked.  (So long as they're still hot!)

[angus]

Gobbling all of one food item in the meal before the others, rather than eating slowly and blending the flavors is not a sign of good taste or breeding, alas.  

There are so many things are wrong with that statement that I wouldn't know where to begin, but two things stand out:  the owning class traditionally had food served in courses, and items were indeed gobbled down before other items are brought out, and "good breeding" has nothing to do with a conversation about, of all things, condiments for fried cut potatoes.

Anyway, fries, especially the thin stringy kind served at Burger King, really must be the first course.  If you try to save them for the second or third course you'll end up eating something with the texture and flavor of a rubber band.  

[angus]

"good breeding" has nothing to do with a conversation about, of all things, condiments for fried cut potatoes.

Why not?

Off topic, of course.  opebo actually recognized it in his next sentence.  (fast food being a "dead giveaway"  The thread assumes a penchant for fast food, the great equalizer.  "breeding" and class needn't come into play.)  Non-sequitur.  Not that this doesn't happen, but as far as I know, the only socially acceptable point of convergence for all sundry threads on this forum is the National Socialist German Workers Party.  Eventually they all get there.  

My sister fancies mustard on hers, by the way, which reminds me that last week when we returned from China via JFK airport and LIRR to Pennsylvania station in Manhattan, I found myself with about an hour to kill before the train to Lancaster.  We decided to have lunch in the food court at penn station.  My son and I opted for Nathans.  Both our dinners came with big, fat fries.  Crinkle cut and dripping with oil.  Well salted.  Delicious naked; still, I wanted something to drown them in.  There were two giant tubs, one yellow and one red, with pump dispensers.  The red one was ketchup.  My son opted for the ketchup.  He's 8 now.  All 8-year-olds like ketchup on everything it seems.  I searched everywhere for mayonnaise.  I found a giant dispensary of packaged condiments in the middle of the food court which had almost everything:  salsas verdes y rojas, barbeque sauce, ketchup, mustard, honey, strawberry jam, orange marmalade, etc.  Almost is the operative word here.  It did not have mayonnaise.  How bizarre.  Eventually, I decided to try Nathan's squirt mustard.  Glad I did!  It wasn't the watery yellow mustard usually on offer at fast food joints, but it was viscous, lumpy, and amber, with textural inhomogeneities and brownish flecks.  It was like Kosciusko mustard or Hebrew national.  I put a huge dollop of it on a paper napkin and rubbed my fries in it.  I would have preferred mayonnaise, but I must say that, as mustards go, the Nathan's mustard worked out very well for the potato condiment.

Mustard does have its followers I've noticed.  I had a colleague in grad school who used a mixture of equal parts mustard and catchup as a fried potato condiment.  It hasn't made its way into the pre-packaged crunchy potato chip aisle, I've noticed.  The "french fried" potato and the "potato chip" are basically the same in terms of molecular structure and have a shared (Belgian) ancestor, but for whatever reason, the choices for those packaged potato chips from stores almost always seem to include "original", barbeque, vinegar, and some combination of sour cream, onion, chive, or green onion, but they do not include mustard, mayonnaise, or ketchup.  Any thoughts on that?

[angus]

Herr's

Look at that, ketchup-flavored potato chips.  And they're healthy, certified kosher, and a great source of vitamin C.  Who would have guessed?

Interesting.  I haven't seen them, which is odd because Herr's has certainly monopolized the market on pretzels, chips, and real estate hereabouts.

[angus]

And Grumps, my dad doesn't care for fries either, he much prefers potato chips.

That sumbitch won't eat chips either.  He pulls them off his plate with a frown and says, "man, I hate chips" as he swirls his dirty martini.