What the Heck is Fry Sauce?!?!

Ogden Standard Examiner ^ | September 17, 1996 | By Michael Burkett

[restornu]

Being from Utah, I have grown up with fry sauce as a regular part of my life. However, since moving to Michigan, I have been ridiculed for asking for it at restaurants. Apparently, no one outside of Utah has heard of it. So for those of you that don't have a clue, I have prepared this article to help explain the magical wonder that is fry sauce. It is an article from the Ogden Standard Examiner (a Utah newspaper.)--The statements in parenthesis are my personal additions.

Utah's Fry Sauce Phenomenon It is Utah's tastiest institution. It's as beloved to this state's natives as lobster is to Mainers, as Cajun spices are to Naw'leaners, as Mickey Mouse-shaped flapjacks are to Disney Worldians. But it is so unique to this area and it's people that virtually all visiting outsiders can be counted upon to utter the old, familiar tourist-diner's battle cry: "Fry sauce? What the heck is fry sauce?!?!"...At which point the locally-born-and-bred food server will eye her customer with an expression that seems to say, "Ha ha ha ha ha. You dolt.

What corner of Outer Slobovia are you from, anyway?" That's how deeply fry sauce has seeped into the collective Utah consiousness. All over North America, of course, you can slather your french fries with ketchup. In various regions, you can drown them in gravy, melted processed cheese or vinegar. But "fry sauce?" What's going on here? How did a mere condiment, of all foodstuff's, manage to insinuate itself into the very lifestyle of one entire United State while remaining completely unknown to the rest or the world? And what in blazes is "fry sauce," anyway? It's just Thousand Island salad dressing, right? (NOT!)

The Fry Sauce Champion

When you have hardball questions like these, there's only one place to go: the very top of the food chain. Or, more specifically, to the very top of the Arctic Circle fast-food chain--where fry sauce was invented over 45 years ago, and where you can actually hear Gary J. Roberts, the corperation's affable president and CEO, actually exclaim, "I've got fry sauce in my veins!" He laughs when he says it. But it would not be at all surprising to find out that it's true. Like the condiment that has brought both of them glory, Arctic Circle and Gary Roberts are products of Utah. The 44-year-old Roberts was born upstate in the farming communexpiration date of about three weeks. We use it up, and our local manufacturer makes more - fresh."

Another Secret Sauce Clearly, it is time to toss out one of those aforementioned hardball questions: What's the big deal about fry sauce? Come on. Isn't it just Thousand Island salad dressing served in a little cup? "No, it is not," laughs Roberts, who has been asked this question before. "It's got secret ingredients. And I'm not gonna tell you what they are." O.K. then. on a scale of 1 to 10, with Thousand Island being a 10, how close is fry sauce? "It's a 1. There's a real big difference. They both have the ketchup-mayonnaise base, but Thousand Island has pickles and relish and a lot of spices that aren't in our fry sauce. We don't have any relish, so it's just smooth and creamy." (Things that make you go) Hmmm. Food scientists around the globe might like to debate that "real big difference." Fans of the Stuff But one fact that can not be dismissed is that, whatever the difference may or may not be, Utahns are is first stand-alone restaurant, at 9th South and Main in Salt Lake, was first called Don Carlos' Bar-Be-Q. In 1950, it became the world's first Arctic Circle. "The way I understand it, Don Carlos wanted to be different," says Roberts. "McDonald's was starting out about the same time, plus there were a growing number of local independents. All of them were selling hamburgers, and he wanted something that would make his burgers unique. Back then, hamburgers came with pickles, ketchup, lettuce and onion and that was it.

So he started experimenting. He decided to put ketchup and mayonnaise on it. He got the taste he was looking for, but he thought, 'Gee, this is awful hard. You gotta put the ketchup on, then the mayonnaise. If we combined them, we could make one sauce out of it!'" What Don Carlos ended up with, says his professional heir, was a substance he called "pink sauce," to which he added garlic and onion and mustard and "all kinds of spices." But Utah's fast-food history was not forever altered until - in one of those inexplicable, serendipitous happenstances that often pass for miracles - Don Carlos picked up a french fry and dipped it into the pink sauce! After taste-testing this never-before-tried combination, Don Carlos uttered five words that have yet to go down in history nex to "Eureka, I have found it!" "Watson, come here, I need you," or "That's one small step for man, one giant step for mankind." According to Roberts, what Don Carlos said was, and we quote: "This is pretty good stuff!" That's not to say Don Carlos would settle for "pretty good." He though some folks might like a little more bite to their fry sauce, so he poured some pickle juice into a second batch to give it a "vinegary flavor." He started mass-producing the stuff, bottling it by the gallon, selling it on the street and to al of his Arctic Circle franchises.

Imitation and Flattery Flash forward to the present. Fry sauce is offered in nearly every eatery within Utah's borders. McDonald's and Burger King were incapable of ignoring the phenomenon; they now produce their own versions. You can even find various brand of bottled "fry sauce" on grocery store shelves. "But," says Roberts with a grin, "it isn't the same. Everyone is trying to duplicate our fry sauce, and they haven't even come close. We haven't changed our recipe for 45 years. Heck, we get letters from all over - Florida, New York, even Korea - from former Utahn's who want us to send them cases of our fry sauce. And we do!" One problem with his imitators' fry sauce, he says, is that "their product has to sit there for three months, six months, who knows? They have to add so many preservatives that it really changes the color, the flavor and the texture. Ours has an expiration date of about three weeks. We use it up, and our local manufacturer makes more - fresh."

Another Secret Sauce Clearly, it is time to toss out one of those aforementioned hardball questions: What's the big deal about fry sauce? Come on. Isn't it just Thousand Island salad dressing served in a little cup? "No, it is not," laughs Roberts, who has been asked this question before. "It's got secret ingredients. And I'm not gonna tell you what they are." O.K. then. on a scale of 1 to 10, with Thousand Island being a 10, how close is fry sauce? "It's a 1. There's a real big difference.

They both have the ketchup-mayonnaise base, but Thousand Island has pickles and relish and a lot of spices that aren't in our fry sauce. We don't have any relish, so it's just smooth and creamy." (Things that make you go) Hmmm. Food scientists around the globe might like to debate that "real big difference."

Fans of the Stuff But one fact that can not be dismissed is that, whatever the difference may or may not be, Utahns are nuts about fry sauce. Just get a load of these endorsements from randomly queried costumers at an Ogden Arctic Circle: "I love fry sauce," gushed Mary Welling of Ogden. "I've tried others, but they're usually real light in color, and they don't taste as good." "I'll take fry sauce over ketchup any day," chimed her husband, Lavere. "Ewwwwww, Ketchup?!" opined 7-year-old Amanda Bierce of North Ogden. "Blecch!" "Fry sauce? What's that?" asked Martin Wyman, who turned out to be visiting from Ohio. And finally, this unsolicited observation from an esteemed collegue, who recently moved here from Florida: "I can't eat anything that looks like it came out of a wound." However unattractively the point is made, you couldn't separate Utahns from their fry sauce with a crow bar. But...why?

Now, the World!
Now that it has conquered Utah, Roberts doesn't have any trouble at all imagining fry sauce becoming nationally beloved. "It's already starting to catch on at our franchised in Oregon." McDonald's is now offering fry sauce there, too, so other companies may look at it as a catch for them in New York of Florida or wherever. Chili's restaurants, a national chain, offers a spicy fry sauce with their onion rings. "So it's definately catching on - which isn't something I really like to see, because now everbody's got something similar to what made us unique. But at least we started it, we know it's the original, they know it's the original. And, ours is still the best. See? I told you. I've got fry sauce in my veins!"

For Those Who Want (or Need) Fry Sauce If you are a transplanted Utahn going through fry sauce withdrawal (or a curious outsider), the real and original McCoy can be obtained by writing to:

Arctic Circle
411 West 7200 South, Suite 200
Midvale, Utah 84047

[Original file URL: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~castillo/Fry.html ; Copy stored here temporarily while that file is not available.]

[restornu]

Let hear from your taste buds!

[Sam Cree]

That sounds pretty good. I think I may try to make some and put it on conch fritters, since the Bahamians are already making a version of it for that purpose.

[Grig]

"Fry Sauce is an abomination" - Generic Ketchup Dude

:)

[Utah Girl]

Fry sauce rules!!! I had friends from out-of-state a couple years ago, we went to a hamburger place in Heber City. There was fry sauce there, no one knew what it was except for me. I never realized that fry sauce is a Utah thing. :)

I make my own too. Just ketchup and mayo in equal proportions. Yum.

[Grig]

Methinks you missed the smiley --> :) and the in-joke.

Belive it or not, I've never heard of Fry Sauce before just now. My wife introduced me to the magic of ketchup/mayo mixing but never called it Fry Sauce.

[carlo3b]

The original (Arctic Circle) version of it is, as expected, a carefully guarded secret recipe, which is actually patented. Some say it is like thousand island salad dressing, but real aficionados argue that the pure version is smooth and creamy and not chunky like the dressing. But many have tried to come up with a recipe for this orange-colored marvel that is served with french fries and/or onion rings, and there are many optional ingredients to try and make it your very own specialty.

The basic recipe

1 part ketchup
2 parts mayonnaise
Mix together until thoroughly blended.
Other options:

Substitute barbecue sauce for ketchup.
Use buttermilk or half & half to thin the sauce.
Pickle juice (either dill or sweet) for a little zing (rumor has it the official recipe includes pickle juice)
Chopped pickles minced very tiny, so the sauce is a little chunky (this makes the sauce look suspiciously like thousand island dressing)
Seasoning salt
Horseradish
Garlic
Whatever exotic spices you have on your shelf--go ahead, experiment
 
 

[TradicalRC]

I had a similar experience when I moved from New Hampshire to Illinois. I discovered that candlepin bowling, Drake's cakes and meat pies seemed to be a regional New England thing. I would think that meat pies would be a big thing in Chicagoland where you can't drive for two blocks without passing places with names like "Mr. Beefy"...

[american colleen]

Sounds great! If it's fattening, I'll definitely try it.

We do malt vinegar on fries (an Irish and English thing, too) and my Newfoundland relatives do gravy and dressing - the dressing is stuffing like you'd put in a chicken or a turkey, put on top of the fries and all is covered with gravy. Oh yeah!!!

You got yer sweet potato fries with maple syrup on them.

You got yer "cheez" fries.

You got yer chili and cheese fries.

Who knew fries were so versatile ;-)

I'm starving.

[carlo3b]

Drake's Cakes I think is a close sister to the Hostess Brand of cup cake..but I may be way off base... New England meat pies?? Is that mincemeat, or a form of shreaded meat?

[Mike Darancette]

Don't Canadians use Catsup/Mayonaise on just about everything, eh?

[restornu]

I used to make something like it is was ketchup/mayo/dash of hot sauce! (Louisiana hot sauce because of it vinigar base)

[dixie sass]

Oh my, what can't be done with a tater! From "nuttin to sumtin in nuttin flat"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jellybean]

I like to dip my fries in almost any kind of sauce...ranch dressing, horseradish, honey mustard, mayo, bbq, gravy, etc... or sprinkle vinegar, tobasco, chili powder, cajun seasoning or paprika on them or load them up with chili 'n cheese. I notice a lot of people in this area using tartar sauce -- not my favorite, but to each his own.

Sometimes I just eat 'em plain :)

[Grig]

No, but in Quebec you can get fries with gravy and cheese curds on it. It's called poutine (poo-teen).

[Walnut]

theres a place in Arizona that hs a platter (ovenproof) filled with a layer of french fries, chilli (the real stuff) a layer of cheese and the whole thing is placed in the broiler to just melt the cheese. Its the greatest thing since Beer

[restornu]

Sounds like Fryzanya:)

[Walnut]

and tastes great. we order it every time we go West. we have friends that live in Lake Havasu and they actually have to make reservations in order for us to get in when we get there. thats how good it is. I have even made it here but it just isn't the same. (thats good though because I wouldn't look foreward to it so much (smile)

[restornu]

You should look for that place on the Google you might get a recipe.

[Walnut]

thanks for the idea. I never thought of that.