Let’s be honest, I have a weakness for fries. Slim, salted sticks of potato that can be dipped in various sauces and cheese is the ultimate junk food snack decadence. We have been used to extremely thin, limp or too-crisp fries for a while now, curtesy the main fast food joints who never seem to be consistent, so we thought we’d try to find the perfect fry. Mind you, our two picks were judged on different scales, Burger King for fast food joints and Manhattan Fish Market for restaurants.

Urban Kitchen (No. 69 Hyde Park Corner, Colombo 02)

Price – 320 ++
Value for Money – Above average
Taste – ****
Overall – Crisp, fat and piping hot, these fries were delicious. They weren’t salted, however, so we missed that particular taste but they were very good and didn’t get greasy when we kept them for a while. Breaking it in two reveals a fair amount of potato and overall, it was yummy but definitely needed condiments to be enjoyed.

Burger King (Arcade Independence Square)

Price – Small - 150
Value for Money – High
Taste - ****
Overall – These are, hands down, the best French fries you can get out of a fast food joint. They are thick and taste fresh as if they were made on the spot. They come salted, with a little tomato sauce packet and are good enough to be eaten on their own. And at that price, they are definitely worth it!

KFC (Racecourse, Reid Avenue, Colombo 07)

Price – Regular 150
Value for Money – Average
Taste - ***
Overall – They were extra salty, thin, limpid fries. Break them in half and you see an exoskeleton with bits of potato clinging to it. They got pretty greasy too. While they’re hot, though, they’re tasty, especially when dipped in to the sauce that accompanies it.

McDonald’s (Racecourse, Reid Avenue, Colombo 07)

Price – Large 200
Value for Money – Below Average
Taste - **
Overall – MacDonald’s fries are usually not that bad so I suppose it was inconsistency that landed us with a pile of chewy, salty, vaguely cardboard-y potato sticks that didn’t really taste like potato. Pity.

The Manhattan Fish Market (31 Deal Place, Colombo 03)

Price – 590++
Value for Money – Above Average
Taste - *****
Overall – These are pricey but so worth it! The fries are thick, soft and seasoned with salt and chilli – on their own, as all the fries were judged, they were absolutely yummy, plus there’s a load of them. The star of this dish called Cheesy Chips, however, is the generous amount of cheese that comes with it. Dipped in the cheese, the fries were easily the tastiest we’d had all day. To be fair, we tried all the other fries with the cheese as well, but theirs was still the best.

By Marissa van Eyck and Sindhu Ratnarajan