Deep Fried Fascism
There was a time when a potato had a heritage, a future, a calling, true potential. This lumpy little dirt covered starch nugget needed to be peeled and hand-cut by a cook who envisioned something better for it, and tossed into hot oil with care and dignity. The deep fried potato had character, they had personality. Some were thick, some crooked, some burnt on edges because like life everything isn’t perfect. That was the excitement of it all. You got fries with quirks. You got establishments with individuality.
Nowadays the poor potato has been drafted into some strange corporate dictatorship.If you walk into most restaurants, takeaways, beach bistros, overpriced burger joints with LED Edison bulbs and pseudo wood and what shows up on your plate? The same frozen, factory-stamped, uniformly beige potato stick.
They are identical. Like they were cloned in a laboratory run by accountants. Every fry the same, same width, same hollow powderiness, same brand, same supplier. Engineered by people who call food “units.”
What happened? Somewhere along the line, humanity looked at the potato, that beautiful, versatile thing of pleasure and said, “You know what this needs? Standardization.”
So now every place serves the same flavourless, pre-fab starch rod shipped from the same industrial freezer fortress delivered on mass in a cardboard sarcophagus and plastic bag death shroud marked “Grade A Potato Style Product.”
Sadly people accept it, an entire generation now not knowing what a real french fry is. They just sit there, dipping these soulless fry replicas into mass produced sauce like they’re participating in cuisine. You’re not eating food, you’re chewing on supply chain efficiency.
No one wants to try anymore. No oddly shaped chip. No skin-on rebellion. No wedge with ambition. Just convenient, predictable potato obedience. It’s culinary conformity disguising laziness. We’ve turned the spud into something that’s an insult and affront to our local potato farmers.
The humble potato used to be a canvas, a statement, a regional accent. French, Belgian, British, diner-style, slap chips, waffle cut, every culture had a fingerprint.
Now? It’s all one globalized, freezer-burned monoculture of mediocrity. Your only choice, gauge of girth and which corporate giant benefits.
The potato didn’t fail us. We failed the potato. We took one of Earth’s greatest gifts, stripped it of soul, mechanically re-engineered it, reformed it, froze it solid, and made it available in bulk.
Essentially we have successfully turned an unique vegetable into something as boring as a barcode, sadly the chili popper is next.
