Wendy's Bacon Fondue Fries Redefine the Fast Food Cheese Fry Game

The Guilty Pleasure: Bacon Fondue Fries
Where to Get It: Wendy’s
Price: $2.49
What it Really Costs: The life of all other fast food cheese fries

If you’ve been following the fast food world at all over the last few months, then you know that Wendy’s has released several different variations of cheese fries as “luxury” side items. Some have been tasty while others are rather uninspiring, but they’ve come from pretty much the same formula time and time again.

Take some slightly undercooked fries, smother them in a cheap enough cheese sauce that it seems like it should be sprayed from a can, add a healthy amount of better-than-average fast food bacon, and then add in spices or more bacon or whatever you want to make them worth spending a few bucks on. It was novel the first couple of times, but it eventually became far too predictable.

But now it seems that maybe Wendy’s was just lulling us to sleep before they turned their side dish on its head.

On paper, the Bacon Fondue Fries seem like they should just be another boring addition to the rotating line. Upon setting eyes upon the same black plastic plate that the others were also served on, it was clear that they weren’t.

Sure, the fries and bacon are the same as ever (not that there’s anything wrong with that, as the bacon has always been the highlight), but it’s the cheese where there’s a noteworthy difference. Instead of adding flavored bells and whistles, they replaced the stadium nacho-like cheese with an actual thick and creamy white fondue.

Was it the best fondue we’ve ever been served? No. Was it the best fondue we’ve ever been served through a drive-through window? Absolutely. Not only did the savory cheese sauce make everything seem more luxurious (not necessarily fancy, but less trashy than most things you’d expect in fast food), but it was also significantly more filling. They’re really what all fast food cheese fries should strive to be.

It might not be the best idea, but you could probably pass off an order of Wendy’s Bacon Fondue Fries as something much classier next time you have a date over by putting it on a real plate instead of the cheap plastic. Actually, you might want to get a couple of orders, as we were left wanting more after a single portion of these fries.