KoJa Kitchen (multiple locations)
2395 Telegraph Ave. [Map]
Berkeley, CA 94704
Ph: (510) 962-5652
Hours: Mon-Sun, 11am-10pm
Facebook: KoJa Kitchen
Twitter: @KoJaKitchen
Instagram: @kojakitchen
Yelp: KoJa Kitchen
Price range: $ ($10 and under)

Duck fat fries from El Patio in Berkeley. (Shelby Pope)

If the other dishes on this list speak to the joys of excess, these fries are an example of how good fries can be when they’re stripped down to their basic elements. No, the fries at Hamei Hamedi’s Mexican/Venezuelan restaurant El Patio (formerly Café V) aren’t the most elaborate, but they’re not your traditional American french fries in the McDonald’s mold. These are simply better than your average fries, thanks to several tiny flourishes. They appear hand cut, with a few remnants of actual potato skin remaining (no Sysco-uniformity here), and they’re sizable yet well-crisped. They’re cooked in duck fat, which gives them an appetizing richness, and they lack the stale oil taste that afflicts lesser fries. Instead of merely salting them, the restaurant showers them with an addicting seasoning salt they blend themselves. And rather than a server leaving you with a desultory bottle of Heinz, they provide an accompaniment of homemade roasted red pepper aioli, with a subtle yet distinct heat. Plus, the fries at El Patio are the most glamorous you’re likely to encounter, arriving at the table in an elegant metal cone.

El Patio
2056 San Pablo Ave. [Map]
Berkeley, CA 94702
Ph: (510) 548-2222
Hours: Mon, 3-10pm; Tue-Sat, 11-12am; Sun, 11am-10pm
Facebook: El Patio
Price range: $ ($10 and under)

Fungi Fries from the Snack Shack in Berkeley. (Shelby Pope)

Hungry students forced to trek uphill to the north side of the UC Berkeley campus don’t lack for food options: there’s pizza, Indian burritos, Vietnamese, Himalayan, and more. (There's also no lack of punny WiFi names: my phone offered to connect me to the “Abraham linksys” network when I arrived at the Hearst Food Court.) The Snack Shack, from owners Rachel Spector and Scott Wortmann, offers fried foods, the kind of food that serves as a natural pairing to the restaurant's amenities, which includes a TV playing sports, an astroturfed-floor, Big Buck Hunter and foosball. The menu features a few types of burgers, Lucky Charms milkshakes, a fridge full of craft beers, and rotating specials that try to top each other in their creativity and calorie count: recent weeks featured an “oatmeal stout beer battered bacon Brie stuffed fried burger w/ strawberry serrano bacon jelly” and a “pork belly macaroni and cheese burrito w/caramelized onions and peppers.” An entire section of the menu is dedicated to fries, and while truffle fries are a star dish at many restaurants, at the Snack Shack they're one of the more banal offerings, compared to other options like sweet potato fries with cranberry mustard or maple butter fries. I tried the fungi fries, featuring waffle fries the size of Christmas ornaments topped with an umami rich combination of tender mushrooms, an herby aioli, caramelized onions, chives.

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