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Comment by petitmiam | Hacker News Reader

I've only been to the UK once, but I don't remember fries being called "chips" in UK McDonalds.

I've always thought of "fries" as those skinny things McDonalds/Hungry Jacks/Burger King sell, while chips are the chunkier version you get at a proper Fish'n'Chip shops or pub. Restaurants here (Australia) generally distinguish between the two.

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McDonald's call them "fries" because they're American. Down the pub (or at least down mine) they'll be called chips.

As somebody in the UK I'd have to agree french-fried and chips are different things. One is reconstituted potatoe's into small thin like eddibles of a uniform small size and chips are cut potatoes into chunkier like bits.

http://www.okeiweb.com/experience/images/stories/Image/pictu... is as good as any picture of a chip and as you can see it is nothing like a french fry.

> reconstituted potatoe

I've never seen a deep fried reconstituted potato called a french fry. The closest thing I can think of do that is a tater tot.

Where I live, the fried potato-variant in the image is the same thing as fries - we don't distinguish between our variants. We might go as far as calling them thick fries, but that's about it.

Well, either way it's deep-fried potato.

It does seem really stupid though. Are you going to go to a fish-and-chips shop, ask for "chips but no fish", get told that they're not allowed to sell that, and then say "OK, we'll go to McDonald's instead"? That's never going to happen!

"We will give you the fish for free as long as you promise to throw it at the brand police."

"Yes but I don't want to assault anyone."

"Ok. We are cooking special, non-salted fish for that purpose."

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