I respect the origin story of a pissed off chef with a picky diner who kept saying the fried potatoes were too thick. It probably isn't true and merely an anglo POV, but it's a good customer service story nonetheless.
I like that in that story, the chef was like "hah! this will show him!" and the customer was just like "oh, yeah, this is actually perfect. thank you so much!!"
There was a chef in upstate New York, who was of black and Mohawk decent, who ran a restaurant frequently by rich New York people and apparently something like this went down and he popularized potato chips in the US. Accounts vary though, I believe his son claimed that he accidentally just dropped some potato shaving into a frying pan and discovered they tasted good and so rolled with it.
Thing is thin cutting potatoes and frying them in duck fat was already a thing in England and Ireland, so he didn’t really invent them. I believe there’s evidence that all potato eating cultures at some point had the idea of cutting them real thin and frying them to a crisp. Honestly I find most stories of “who invented [insert food]” suspect unless it’s something really specific. Yeah sure, the Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich, nobody before him had the fucking idea to put meat and cheese between two slices of bread.
I respect the origin story of a pissed off chef with a picky diner who kept saying the fried potatoes were too thick. It probably isn't true and merely an anglo POV, but it's a good customer service story nonetheless.
I like that in that story, the chef was like "hah! this will show him!" and the customer was just like "oh, yeah, this is actually perfect. thank you so much!!"
Chef: :sadness:
Apparently this is half true.
There was a chef in upstate New York, who was of black and Mohawk decent, who ran a restaurant frequently by rich New York people and apparently something like this went down and he popularized potato chips in the US. Accounts vary though, I believe his son claimed that he accidentally just dropped some potato shaving into a frying pan and discovered they tasted good and so rolled with it.
Thing is thin cutting potatoes and frying them in duck fat was already a thing in England and Ireland, so he didn’t really invent them. I believe there’s evidence that all potato eating cultures at some point had the idea of cutting them real thin and frying them to a crisp. Honestly I find most stories of “who invented [insert food]” suspect unless it’s something really specific. Yeah sure, the Earl of Sandwich invented the sandwich, nobody before him had the fucking idea to put meat and cheese between two slices of bread.