Food La La: Aloha ‘Fry-day’

The author, left, prepares to dive into more than two dozen orders of large French fries at McDonald's Keeaumoku with friends, from left, Gene Park, Aya Nishihara, Cory Mitsui and Toby Tamaye. (Photo courtesy Lindsey Muraoka)

BY LINDSEY MURAOKA / Special to the Star-Advertiser

Everyone has at least one type of food that they simply can’t resist. I have three — pizza, chocolate soufflé from Roy’s, and French fries! Seriously, if any of these items are placed in front of me, I become a human goldfish who can’t stop eating.

So I was quite intrigued when my friends Gene Park and Toby Tamaye posted pictures on their Facebook pages of students in Japan and Korea participating in “potato parties.”

What is a potato party? Well, it’s this odd craze where a group of people go to McDonald’s (or any other fast-food restaurant), order a ridiculous amount of fries, dump them onto a table, take a bunch of pictures, then proceed to gorge into all of that deep-fried glory. The fad spread like wildfire throughout Twitter, where a picture showing 60 orders of large fries was tweeted more than 10,000 times in Japan within a day.

My fry fanatic friends and I decided we just had to try this out, so we met at the Keeaumoku McDonald’s on Friday, March 16, to create our own potato party!

Among the five of us, we gathered 26 orders of large fries.

If you’re wondering how many calories all of these fries were, here’s the math. One large fry is 500 calories. Multiply that by 26 orders and you get 13,000 calories! I’m just thankful that I worked out every day this week in preparation for this.

First, we prayed to the Fry Gods.

Then we took tons of pictures to post on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I didn’t think it was going to receive so much attention, but a picture I posted of my friends and I with the fries received more than 75 likes and 30 comments on Facebook. The other customers in the restaurant were getting a kick watching us eat away. Many people stopped to take pictures of us. The woman sitting behind us laughed the entire time we were there.

Another woman walked over to our table and started grabbing fries without even asking us. I think she must’ve mistaken our table as a free fries buffet.

The coolest light saber ever!

Even though we tried, we couldn’t finish all of the fries ourselves so we shared a bunch with everyone at the restaurant. Free fries for all! Also, Tamaye took home his own custom extra-extra-extra-large fries.

My friends and I are already thinking of our next party. Perhaps a Chicken McNugget party is on the horizon?
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Lindsey Muraoka blogs about food and drink for the Pulse. Contact her on Twitter or via email at foodlalablog@gmail.com.

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