The Highs and Lows of Louisville

Went to Louisville, KY for the first time ever recently.  The only things I know about Louisville is that they have whiskey, horse racing, and Hunter S. Thompson was born there (so it must be pretty cool).

Eddie Merlot's was right across from the hotel, so I decided to check it out.  Prior research of this schmanzy chain indicated that they are fairly proud of their Parmesan Truffle Fries.

Indeed, it was fairly schmanzy-with real glasses and everything.  Good thing I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans.

Pride in fries confirmed!  $9.50!  This would be the most I had ever spent on fries to date.  I was super-excited.

First out was this hoity-toity genie lamp filled with chilled ketchup.  I rubbed it to see if the fry genie would come out and grant me 3 fry wishes.  No genie :(

The presentation.

Hmmm.  I guess I didn't expect there to be a large amount, but this was on the light side.

They tasted.....meh.  They were fresh, crisp, and hot, but the truffle was not present enough and the Parmesan tasted stale.

Jack ate his with a knife and fork and called us savages.

For $9.50, this is a total rip.  5 out of 10.

The next day we found some food trailers in the parking lot of the convention center.  I tried fries from both the Kentucky Pork Producers and the Kentucky Cattlemen's Association.

At both trailers, the fries were $3.75.  Here are the ones from the Pork Producers.

They were hot, fresh, sufficiently crispy, and had a sweet outer crust-almost caramelized.  The seasoning was spot on.

Dumped on the plate to show amount.

For a trailer in a parking lot, these things were pretty good.  $3.75 is steep, but the amount was fair and we were a captive crowd.  8 out of 10.

The Cattlemen's fries were a different matter.

I got excited when I saw that they were steak fries, but I was depressed when I tasted em. In this closeup you can see that they were devoid of any seasoning whatsoever.

Bland.  Insipid.  Boo.  3 out of 10.

Bethany noticed that the cheese fries from the Pork trailer looked like a good bet so I got some (you know, to be thorough).  $4.75 got me this:

It was basically a slightly larger amount of fries in a nacho container with that nasty (tasty) nacho cheese that comes out of an industrial size can from Costco.

The cheese made my stomach hurt, but it was totally worth it.  8 out of 10.

The next day in the airport we killed time with some fries at this weird Pizza Hut subsidiary/trickery called Stars of Louisville.

Waffle fries for $2.99 in an airport?  What a steal!  Wait....Served in a styrofoam bowl?  And that doesn't look like that many fries.

I pulled them all out to count.  As I suspected, there were only 12 full-size waffle fries.

And also they tasted unsophisticated-lacking any of the complexity that good waffle fries are known for.  3 out of 10.

Louisville-you need to step it up.