Mr. G’s Gourmet Fries: Original Garlic

August 7, 2008 | Reviewer: Abi

Photo of Mr. G’s Gourmet Fries: Original Garlic Price: $4.99
Serving: 1/7th of a bag of fries, 6.666oz.
Servings per package: 7
Calories: 180 per serving
Fat: 9%, 6g
Cholesterol: 0%, 0mg
Sodium: 15%, 350mg
Protein: 2g
Carbohydrates: 6%, 18g
Fiber: 11%, 3g
Sugar: 0g
Weight Watchers Points: 3 Points

Mr. G says: Revolutionize your fries! Mr. G’s Original Garlic Flavored Fries are a great compliment to hamburgers, hot dogs, steaks or any time you have the urge for a truly outrageous snack.

Abi says: I considered going to the Gilroy Garlic Festival a couple of weeks ago, but realized that I didn’t really feel like hanging out in enormous crowds of people who’d been chowing down all day on garlic ice cream, garlic shrimp scampi and garlic and chocolate peanut butter cups. It is one thing to eat a garlicky meal with your partner and then cozy up in front of ‘Becoming Jane’ (the most depressing movie in existence - also, Valley of the Dolls is always checked out- is it worth a rental? I’m turning into that girl who’s always coming into the video store trying to get a title that will never ever be there.). It is quite another (er, back to the Garlic Festival) to endure sweltering heat with 100,000 other garlic stuffed human beings.

So I bought these frozen fries instead.

The G in Mr. G stands for Ghiringhelli and the company that makes these fries is located just north of San Francisco. If you live in the Bay Area and are a locavore of loose morals you could probably qualify this as a local food item. I will just say that the fries themselves contain a lot of weird things (yellow cornmeal, baking soda and guar gum?) but the actual garlic sauce is extremely basic: chopped garlic, canola oil, olive oil, parsley, salt and spices.

These are not all natural fries, but they are very easy to prepare and consume:

Preheat oven
Place cookie sheet of fries in oven for 20 minutes (no flipping)
Put sauce packet in small bowl of warm water
Take fries out of oven, toss fries with defrosted garlic sauce, eat.

I thought that these fries would require multiple sessions of flipping, but maybe that’s what the baking soda is for: no fry flipping.

For all of the ease in preparation, these fries come out of the oven perfectly crisp. This probably has something to do with them being pre-cooked and full of extaneous ingredients. Rice flour, anyone?

The garlic sauce is pungent and abundant, easily coating every fry with a greasy jacket of parsley-flecked oil. Half of the sauce would have been plenty, so if you’re making these at home restraint is your friend. Unless you’re trying to sabotage someone’s diet. Then restraint is your enemy.

The ‘7 servings per package’ concept is utter crap. More accurately there are 3-4 servings in here, which means you’ll need to double all of the nutritional information above.

Now to the promises made in the package. Are these fries revolutionary? Not if you live anywhere near a Gordon Biersch Brewery: they’ve been making garlic fries for 20 years. Do garlic fries pair well with assorted barbecue meats? I imagine so, thought I had mine with macaroni and cheese (carbtacular!). Are the fries outrageous? Only if you’re a vampire.

[Note: Not reviewed here or available at my local store are the other truly outrageous varieties of these fries. If you see them please, please purchase and review them. Please. Other fries:

Cheddar Bacon
Pepperoni Pizza
Smokin’ BBQ Ranch
Cheddar Cheese

Pepperoni Pizza French Fries! OMG!]

comments

9 Responses to “Mr. G’s Gourmet Fries: Original Garlic”

Corey V. on August 7th, 2008

Can we officially put an end to the habit of putting “Smokin’” in front of any and all BBQ or Barbecue products?

Fellow copywriters, are you with me?

ARE YOU WITH ME?

* crickets *
John M. on August 7th, 2008

Come on, “Becoming Jane” is great!

I’ve never understood the principle behind orgaic fried anything. Fries are bad for you, and making them organic doesn’t really cancel that out.
Becka on August 7th, 2008

Wow, I’m suprised they’re vegan.
Lisa on August 7th, 2008

By the way, Netflix is the best invention since french fries… I’ve been using them for years and I see all the new releases within days without having to camp outside my Blockbuster.

‘Valley of the Dolls’ is an ok movie, but chances are someone ran off with their one copy and they never replaced it. The book was MUCH better!
Abi Jones on August 7th, 2008

Corey-

You are just plain out of luck when it comes to ’smokin’.

-Abi
Abi Jones on August 7th, 2008

@John - They’re ‘Original’ not Organic

@Becka - That’s my assumption from Googling the ingredients. All ingredients were non-animal, so the entire food was non-animal.

@Lisa - We get movies from the library. They have tons of great ones (and TV like Mad Men and Twin Peaks), but only having one copy of any given item is something of a bummer. We just got the TV, so no Netflix yet.
Les on August 7th, 2008

The Guar Gum, Baking Soda, and Cornmeal most likely are part of whatever batter they have on them.
Sharon on August 8th, 2008

Trader Joe’s has pretty good garlic fries. Maybe they’re made by the same people???
Abi Jones on August 8th, 2008

@Les - Probably. Personally, I prefer batterless fries.

@Sharon - They might just be from the same folks.