Of Fries, Revisited

A while ago we discussed together a stirring debate about french fry preferences and doubts about the validity of the public opinion. Today we revisit this theme. I'm not a big fan of Wendy's fries, and I had in my mind that McDonald's had absolutely fantastic fries. A couple weeks ago I had them and I regretfully admit that they were not nearly as good as I had remembered. Are they still better than Wendy's fries? Probably so. But it sparked the question of which restaurant truly has the best french fries. 

With it being March and thus having invested quite a bit of time in college basketball's March Madness (as good as the Christmas season, almost), I thought the best way to determine which restaurant truly has the best fries was to build a bracket and have people vote on the two choices on my Instagram story. I asked people for submissions of their favorite fry places and was hoping for enough to fill a classic 64 team bracket, but I didn't have enough so we went with 32 teams. Seeding was determined by how many people had submitted the particular (more submissions roughly equates to more popularity). 

Here are a couple hypotheses and notes about the structure of this endeavor:

• 
  The goal with this was to narrow down the field enough to go try maybe the top eight and decide for myself
• I predicted that Chick Fil A, McDonald's, and Wendy's would all be in the final game and win despite not actually being that good
• This is obviously a biased study as people see a name and associate it with having good fries
• To standardize this, I only included original fries (no Arby's curly fries or sweet potato fries from Cubby's, or Cajun fries from Five Guys, etc)
  

Much to my disappointment (although not to my surprise), the final was Wendy's and Chick Fil A. Chick Fil A won. A common consensus was that the elite 8 matchup of Five Guys and Red Robin should have been the actual championship. Now I have a much better idea of what restaurants to go to to try their fries. Attached is the completed bracket with the seeding and vote totals for all 2 of my readers if they happen to have interest in this.

On an unrelated note, the "A Rush of Blood to the Head" album by Coldplay is absolutely fantastic. So good,