Melbourne Madness – Lord of the Fries

by The Ninja on December 6, 2009

Location: 2-26 Elizabeth St, Melbourne VIC 3000

Taste-Type: New-Age Fast Food

Price: Box of fries $4.95 (Cone $3.95), Classic sauces $0.75, Deluxe sauces $1.25

How to get there: Train or tram to Flinders St station, or just walk to the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders St.

Contact: 03-96545673

lord of the fries - the team scrutinises the optionsThe team has just parachuted into the heart of Melbourne and are feeling slightly peckish. We reconverge with little difficulty on the rooftop of Federation Square and I direct my comrades towards our first checkpoint. My three team-mates are at first suspicious of this hole-in-the-wall joint; Brian scrutinises the menu intensely before choosing his target. With its lurid red signs and rapid-fire, 24-hour service, Lord of the Fries provides ample ammunition for those wishing to compare the food industry to the sex trade. The use of special sauces on the fries further compounds the problem.

lord of the fries - three types of sauce in a circleWe extract from this bordello of cheaply satisfying fast food within a few minutes, bringing our captured targets to a nearby park for thorough interrogation. First to go down is the chip-box with Belgian Sauce(bottom left), a generous slathering of allegedly European-style mayonnaise. The team is enraptured. Mayonnaise with such an alluring peppery tinge and lasciviously creamy-slick texture has never been encountered before. Even worse (or better, from a culinary perspective), the African Sauce(bottom right) mixes this mayonnaise with onions and tomato sauce to create a potent blend of salt and spice. Each mayo-covered chip suddenly becomes a deadly weapon of addiction, threatening to enslave the very ninjas targeting it. I act fast. My katana and wakizashi slip from their sheaths and shred the mayo into its molecular components, leaving my team-members blinking as though awaking from a dream or intense game of Defence of the Ancients.

lord of the fries - satay sauce sticking to the friesFortunately for my team’s collaborative and moral integrity, the Satay Sauce is less seductive, with its putrid yellow-brown hue making even the numerous flies around us take flight. While the peanut taste in the sauce is strident, the honeyed overtones tend to numb the tongue with their intensity. I soon stop eating these fries, evaporate them with my portable flamethrower, and take to halving flies in midair with my fingernails.

lord of the fries - excrementally red mince of the italian sauceMuch like the streets of its namesake, the Italian Sauce looks to be filled with rapidly-decomposing roadkill and excrement. This sauce is a disappointment: the mince-meat has not been heated and subsequently takes on a curdling-heavy weight that is difficult to digest. While the cheese is fresh and tasty, my comrades and I were expecting it to have been melted on the meat and are sorely displeased as a result. The flies are delighted by the excremental appearance of the sauce, but I slay them before they can fully express their opinions.

lord of the fries - blurred vision of flinders st station in the sunlightA lunch of golden-salted fries and exotic sauces is not the best choice for the health-conscious. In fact, I feel my vision blurring as we head to our base of operations and am forced to take a cyanide pill to freshen up. However, the value and quality that the Lord of the Fries offers up are difficult to surpass, with the brilliance of the Euro-mayonnaise drawing crowds at all times of the day for good reason. A fly buzzes around my eyes, trying to suck up some traces of mayo on my balaclava. I kill it, slit its throat, and pop another pill.

{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

Simon December 6, 2009 at 10:08 am

cyanide pills, huh? I’ll have to remember never to accept any breath “mints” from you :)

I tend to be a sauce-on-side kind of person when it comes to fries so seeing it served this way makes me think of how quickly fries go from crisp to mush.

Also, I’ve heard bad stories due to bad sauces there causing illess. For a late night run, I’d probably only stick to sauces with the half life of plutonium.

Dennis December 6, 2009 at 10:33 am

dotadotadotadotadota

Karen December 6, 2009 at 10:46 am

Oh yes and we were one such bad story. 3am run. Was too disgusting to stomach and then the other half spent 2 days incapacitated with projectile vomiting.

Their sausage rolls are an abomination as well. Perhaps LOTF is most lethal under the cover of darkness :P

The Ninja December 6, 2009 at 11:42 am

@Simon @Karen: Never had any problems. Although I’ve never done a night operation on their stores. You guys need to pack more cyanide in my opinion.

chocolatesuze December 7, 2009 at 8:47 am

aw man the belgian sauce sounds tasty! did you go next door and get a giant eclair?

FFichiban December 7, 2009 at 11:23 am

Mannnn I still have to get to Melbourne :(

There was a stall at the Mosman markets which sold some of the best fries and Belgian (or Dutch?) mayo… I have only seen it once tho… I await their return

The Ninja December 7, 2009 at 11:43 pm

@chocolatesuze: we didn’t. We did something far greater and more terrible than any food blogger could (or should) imagine. You’ll hear about it soon : )

@FFIchiban: sounds like a taste-test challenge. Let’s do it

Forager December 9, 2009 at 7:04 am

Mm! Heard so much about this place. Great name. So so many places on my to-eat-at list for Melbourne!

Victoria December 11, 2009 at 6:01 pm

Had fries from LotF when I was in Melbourne last year with their ‘Obama’ sauce for novelty’s sake. Was…interesting.

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