Lord of the Fries + Giveaway!

Disclaimer: I was invited by Keep Left PR to have a complimentary meal at Lord of the Fries and give my opinion. 

"Brad….I want potatoes."

The above utterance is often heard, from me obviously, usually after one too many drinks, if we're wandering around the city or…well, most of the time really. I love them potatoes deep fried and salted honey. Mmmhmm!

But despite this love, I had never been to Lord of the Fries. How can this be? I guess when it has come up in conversation between Brad and I, he's had so-so opinions of them, as he's tried them once or twice before, and I guess it's easy to become creatures of habit and instead of trying new things, end up at the same places that satiate the cravings.

But when I was asked if I would like to try some of the fries and gluten free goodies at Lord of the Fries, how was I to say no? It's always great to find more places (especially fast food type places) that have gluten free options. 

So Brad and I rocked up to the Lord of the Fries on Chapel Street to check them out!

What makes Lord of the Fries different, and well, more royal, than other fries? They're fresh, not frozen, made from aussie potatoes, without trans fatty acids and fried instead with sunflower and cottonseed oil. So all in all, fries that should make your digestive track a fair bit happier in all it sounds like! 

But not just chips, burgers, hot dogs and nuggets too…albeit with a slight twist…the entire store is vegetarian, halal and kosher too. So them patties ain't beef, but actually a soy and textured soy protein. What I found interesting as well, is that since there is no meat involved, it's supposed to be eco friendly, which would make sense, although I haven't been able to find further information on that.

Anyhow! Sure, it's great that the potatoes are healthier and the 'meat', meatless, but does it taste any good? 

We naturally started with a bowl of medium fries. Now, I've always been an advocate for golden, crispy, crispy fries, although I totally understand that this effect, cannot be achieved without a little…assistance. So I guess for me, Lord of the Fries fries, didn't get me totally excited. But, we still ploughed through the whole bowl, as they are still quite tasty, even if the crispy texture that I adore is not quite there. 

For sauces, we went with an American, smooth southern BBQ sauce and the Asian sauce, with belgian mayo, thai satay and onion. In hindsight, I should have realised that satay is not the same as curry ketchup, and I found the flavour profile a bit weird, satay sauce is made for my satays after all. I absolutely adored the American BBQ sauce though, rich, smokey, hearty, everything you expect!

We also got some onion rings, as I have grown a fondness for them (but it's not hard to grow a fondness for anything deep fried really), which Brad and I totally loved. Totally delicious and lightly crumbed, they were just so super crunchy, some of the ring were more dome shaped (assumedly the ends of the onions etc), but these were easily the best bits as they were juicy on the inside. JUICY. YUM. ONIONS. YUM.

The Original burger was loaded with a Lord of the Fries patty, cheese, pickles, onion, lettuce, belgian mayo, mustard and ketchup…which I also got with the gluten free bun. I think my first impression, looking at it, was that there was a whole lot of bun, but not a lot going on in-between. The gluten free bun though, was pretty darned nice, fluffy and nicely toasted. And whilst I did generally find the bun to filling ratio a bit out of proportion, the patty was absolutely delicious and quite well flavoured. I probably wouldn't have guessed straight away that I wasn't eating meat if I had eaten it blindly.

I wonder if the bun to filling ratio might just be because of the gluten free bun, as I saw a few other burger orders go to other tables and noticed that the proportions were looking a bit healthier on them. Still though, I would probably go for a double burger in the future (which means two patties), just so that there's a bit more bite to the burger in general.

I could have also gone for more cheese…but I could always go for more cheese!

Brad got one of the mini burgers, which are about half the size of a regular burger and are so cute. Unfortunately they don't have gluten free versions of this, but I had a nibble anyway. We chose to try the Guru, which came with a guru veggie patty, tomato, onion, lettuce and a green chilli sauce. 

Um, yum! The guru was small, but spicy! I loved the nice kick of heat in there and the overall flavours were great, although we found this patty got a little bit mushed as we dug into it!

Brad also tried the Chicago hot dog with mild peppers, tomato, onion, pickles, celery, salt, relish and mustard. Again, I initially thought that looking at it, the bun to filling ratio looked a bit off, but the bun was quite soft and fluffy and compacted up nicely. It was also surprisingly tasty, and I really would not have guessed I was not eating meat if I had not known! I thought the hot dog really looked like an actual frankfurter and was quite impressed with the texture and how well it held up. 

I think it's great what Lord of the Fries aims to do and I think generally, they've done a good job with the food, to fill in such a tricky little niche. 

I think one of the biggest dilemmas I have with Lord of the Fries, especially for me, is that aesthetically, I find the food a little lacklustre to look at. It doesn't pack the wow factor that a bag of golden, herbed chips or a very tanned and toasted bun, stacked with the fillings has. I am very visually orientated (obviously) and as they usually say, you eat with your eyes first, so the first impressions I generally get a little bit 'eh'. I feel like, if they could make the food a bit sexier to look at, maybe they'd get a little more attention. 

Sex sells honey!

Although, as they also say, you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover and I was quite genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed the taste of everything. 

So I may have to make a conscious decision every now and again now, to pop by Lord of the Fries after a night out (since they do generally open fairly late), so that I can have a little bit more peace with my body the next morning….

…and you can too!

GIVEAWAY TIME!

Keep Left PR has kindly offered 3 meal deal vouchers to give away, which will let you try one of the meal deals at Lord of the Fries. So you could have a burger or a hot dog, with fries, a drink and a sauce! Oh yeah! Fries for everyone! 

So how can you score a cool lil voucher? Just leave a comment on this post and like my Facebook page (if you do already, you've saved yourself a step!) and I'll draw 3 names out at random on Monday the 1st of October, which gives you a week! Make sure you leave me an accurate email address so I can contact you or the voucher will have to get passed on to someone else...

Easy peasy, so what are you waiting for? 

Lord of the Fries