Job Discussion Forums

[Justin Trullinger]

Just asked my local British English Consultant.

She says she'd call them chips, regardless, in McDonalds or otherwise.

She did ask why, in the name of all that's tasty, you'd be having them in McDonalds, though.

Best,
justin

[johnslat]

Dear Justin,
De gustibus non est disputandum (except, of course, there always is.)
Regards,
John

[jwbhomer]

[johnslat]

Dear jwbhomer,

Indigestion - or possibly food poisoning.

Regards,
John

[soapdodger]

Nothing - I think they are defunct.

[johnslat]

Dear soapdodger,

The reports of Wimpy's death have been slightly exaggerated:

http://wimpysonline.com/

Although Wimpy has decreased in numbers in the United Kingdom, it is still found in some towns and cities and at the RoadChef motorway services and at Megabowl bowling alleys. However the branches at RoadChefs and Megabowl have a counter service as opposed to a table service format.
On 27 February 2007 Famous Brands, who owns the Wimpy franchise in South Africa, announced that it had acquired Wimpy UK. Having acquired the brand Famous Brands has re-branded Wimpy in the UK to bring it in line with Wimpy South Africa. The 'new' logo is actually one used by Wimpy UK from the 1960's until the 1980's.
Wimpy are said to be looking at a long term plan to bring the brand up to date and increase the number of units throughout the UK.
Wimpy have now taken their first steps into making all table service restaurants modern, they have now signed a deal with Coca Cola they have transferred from Pepsi Co. There is also a brand new menu available at Wimpy which is a lot bigger than the previous menu.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimpy_Bar#International

[arioch36]

Chips are also a reference to the dung of some animals. Back in the good old barbaric USA, we have Buffalo chip flinging contests. Maybe something similar in Scotland?

Now who wants to tell me why they are called "French Fries"?
My understanding is that Thomas jefferson returned from France, where a Frenchman had been pushing the use of potatoes, including putting pieces of potatoes in boiling oil, French fried potatoes.
The British, still fighting the French, refused to concede this novelty to the French, so the name never caught on.

Steak fries are now found in better restaurants, maybe more akin the Belgian Dutch fry

[johnslat]

Thank you "Straight Dope" and Google:

in the 1840s, pomme frites ("fried potatoes") first appeared in Paris. Sadly, we don't know the name of the ingenious chef who first sliced the potato into long slender pieces and fried them. But they were immediately popular, and were sold on the streets of Paris by push-cart vendors.

Frites spread to America where they were called French fried potatoes. You asked how they got their name--pretty obvious, I'd say: they came from France, and they were fried potatoes, so they were called "French fried potatoes." The name was shortened to "french fries" in the 1930s.

By the way, the verb "to french" in cooking has come to mean to cut in long, slender strips, and some people insist that "french fries" come from that term. However, the French fried potato was known since the middle 1800s, while the OED cites the first use of the verb "to french" around 1895, so it appears pretty convincing that "french fried potatoes" came before the verb "frenching." The origin of the name is thus the country of origin French and not the cooking term french.

In the U.K., fried fish had been on sale by street vendors since the 1600s. In 1864, a brilliant (but, alas, unknown) Brit teamed French fried potatoes (called "chips" in English) with fried fish, to create the famous and popular fish and chips.

Today, of course, the worldwide popularity of McDonalds and Burger King and Wendy's and their ilk have brought French fries to the world. Amusingly, they are now often called "American fries" in many countries.

French fries are commonly eaten with ketchup in the U.S., but with malt vinegar (delicious) in the U.K., and with mayonnaise (appalling) in the Netherlands. The French mostly take them straight, but the Belgians have the best idea (as is so often the case with food): they eat frites with buckets full of mussels.

While we're on the subject, potato chips (British: crisps) are a purely American invention. In 1852, a chef (George Crum) at a resort in Saratoga, N.Y., was annoyed when a patron (the story says Cornelius Vanderbilt) sent some French fried potatoes back to the kitchen, complaining that they were too thick. Somewhat spitefully, Crum sliced a potato so thin that it couldn't be speared by a fork, and then fried the slices. One can hear him mutter, "That thin enough for you?" But the patron was delighted, not annoyed, and the potato chip was thus born. They were called "Saratoga chips" and were popular in the Northeast (often eaten with raw clams and oysters) until the 1920s, when they spread through the U.S. and thence the world.

Regards,
John

[arioch36]

John,

As always, excellent digging. Can't remember where I heard the jefferson bit. I am pretty sure he would have been dead bt 1840

[11:59]