For the love of chili cheese fries (with onion, of course)

I grew up in Southern California, home to movie studios and Hollywood, sunshine and clear skies (well, clear if you don’t count the smog), blondes and plastic surgery, adding avocado to anything, bleeding-edge technology thanks to companies like Apple and Google, earthquakes, and, from what I hear, a sports team or two. And while it’s well known for those particular things, sure, it’s also home to numerous little mom and pop burger places hoping to be the next Mc Donald’s, Burger King or Wendy’s.

What, you mean you didn’t know? If you lived out there, you’d know. They’re frickin’ ubiquitous.

When I was growing up, home was in a predominantly Chicano and Salvadorian neighborhood just outside of East L.A. in the city of Pasadena. And for several years of my childhood, home was just three or four blocks from a burger place called Tom’s No. 5. It wasn’t so much a diner or a canonical greasy spoon as restauranteurs would call them but a simple burger place much like the various ones that dotted surrounding neighborhoods of my childhood. It was always a treat when my father would give my sisters and me money to go out to Tom’s and pick up a little something. And invariably, “a little something” would include burgers of some kind and always, always chili fries.

And not just chili fries, mind you..

Chili cheese fries.

Chili cheese fries with onion.

Chili fries are awesome. I love chili fries. There’s nothing classy about them, sure, and God bless them for that. And, really, they don’t want to be classy given how unapologetic as hell they are for their natural crudeness. They’re all like “Yah, you go on over there with your fancy schmancy pheasant and raddicchio and Emmantel or whatever. We’ll be over here being all tasty ‘n shit. Y’all come to us when you’re ready for some real food.” And they’re so simple, too! There’s long been a special place in my heart (and my belly) for those simple culinary creations that only involve a handful of ingredients and the easiest of instructions. And chili cheese fries are just that.

I’ve made it myself with just ground meat (turkey, usually, but sometimes beef), one of those sauce packets you find in the grocery store (the ones that don’t require beans but may require tomato sauce, if I recall correctly), shredded cheddar, a yellow or white onion and fries. Sometimes I get one of those frozen bags of fries that only need an oven, a cookie sheet and 45 minutes but most of the time I just pick up a few large orders of french fries at Burger King or whatever. And then the instructions are pretty much: make the chili, cover some fries with it, top it with cheese, roast until cheese is melted and then top off with raw onion bits before serving.

Done.

Here in New England, chili fries of the variety I remember and that are true to the Platonic Ideal of Chili Fries-ness (and, yes, I just made that up, you philosophy majors out there) I maintain are few and far between. Johnny Rockets, the international chain, is by far one of the few places out here that I can reliably get chili cheese fries with onion. While tasty and oh so good, their serving size is totally lacking in comparison to the places I used to frequent. But then we’re talking the kind of portion size where you would place an order with them and within minutes you would get a box (a frickin’ BOX) of fries with so much cheese on them that they had yet to melt.

(Oh, man. I’ve gone and made myself hungry remembering their portion sizes.)

Pretty much everywhere else out here I’ve been to (in Massachusetts, anyway) doesn’t carry this delectable dish.. though they come pretty close to having it. One time, a buddy and I hit a 24-hours Bickford’s Grill and noticed that their late night menu featured not only cheese fries but also chili you can get by the bowl. Getting our server to humor us, we asked her if it would be possible to get the cook to combine the two for us and top it off with some chopped, raw onions. She gave us an intrigued look and soon disappeared into the back. Granted, what was produced several minutes later included red onion, it was still a passable facsimile. If anything, the level by which that particular Bickford’s was willing to accommodate our wacky past-midnight request was commendable and they should get the mad props for that even if they still don’t offer chili fries proper.

If you’d like to experience what I’ve gone at length about in this post and your favorite gastronomical haunt woefully doesn’t have it as an offering, I suggest you make chili cheese fries with onion yourself using the bare bones instructions above. But if ever you’re in Pasadena, though, make it a point to check out these places:

Amy’s Fast Food Restaurant
531 E Walnut St. (626) 440-0042

Tops (The Original Tops)
3838 East Colorado Blvd. (626) 449 4412

Lucky Boy
640 South Arroyo Parkway (626) 793 0120

Now while the Tom’s no. 5 in my old neighborhood is long gone, the small chain continues to live on over in other parts of the greater Los Angeles area:

Tom’s Number 5 Chiliburgers
9004 Venice Blvd, Culver City (310) 204-0225
4497 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles (323) 937-2489

Tom’s Burgers No. 7
5571 Cahuenga Blvd, North Hollywood (818) 762-2147

Please support these small businesses. They depend on your tummies and your patronage, after all, and if I were local, they’d be depending on mine, too.

I mean, come on. We’re talking chili fries here.

And so we end this article with a photo of a wee ninja stalking some freshly made chili fries because, really, is there any better way to end something than with ninja?

(What, you think these guys don’t like to eat, too? Of course they do. They just don’t make a lot of noise about it. Well, they don’t make a lot of noise, period. They are ninja.)