It’s Fry Day here at AY! We reached out to our close neighbor in downtown Little Rock, Doe’s Eat Place to find out more about their classic, fresh cut fries.

 

Doe’s has been a popular family-owned and operated local restaurant since 1988. Loyal patrons as well as first-time customers come to enjoy their well-known steaks and tamales with some delicious, homemade fries on the side.

“We go through 750 pounds of potatoes each week,” owner Katherine Eldridge says. “A truck from Ben E. Keith comes three, sometimes four, times a week to deliver no. 2 Idaho potatoes.”

 

Every shift begins with potatoes going through the slicer into a five gallon bucket with ice, water and lemon juice to help preserve them.

“The only preservative used at the restaurant is lemon juice and very seldom are any fries carried over to the next shift,” says Eldridge. “We slice more during the shift if we need them and always try to have fresh fries for each shift.”

 

According to Eldridge, Doe’s only started making the fries in-house a year or two ago.

“We used a local company called E Z Spuds for decades, but they went out of business,” she says. “We got notice that they only had enough to get us through the next couple of days and so we had to learn really quickly how to make our own fries.”

 

“You would think it would be simple to make fries—cut up potatoes, put them in oil and fry them. It took a little while to learn that we needed to put them on ice to make them crispier, lemon juice to help preserve them and things like that. We did a lot of research and also received pointers from other local restaurants about how they were doing it.”

Eldridge describes Doe’s fries as “basic, fresh-cut fries with some good old salt.”

 

“We don’t have any special seasonings or sauces. Just our good fries,” she says. “I think if you have a great product that is good and fresh, then it shouldn’t need a lot more.”

Read More: Doe’s Refreshes, Reopens for Business