Wow, you are very lucky if you've never had really bad fries. I've been to places and had undercooked fries, burnt fries, fries with almost no potato in them, soggy fries. McDonald's fries are very okay but they are always okay. They are very rarely hot though, usually quite old, but at least not stone cold like KFC fries (in the UK and Europe we have fries instead of mash with fried chicken). The fries in Belgium are by far the best, but there are some great ones here in Germany.

I've eaten some potato based food crimes in my day. Agreed that Belgium has consistently good fries everywhere.

Consistently mediocre (3/5, thoroughly passable) is the value prop of fast food.

What they do in the UK is horrifying. The soggy oily mass that you eat with a prong thing.

I even went to the current winner of ‘best fish and chips’ that year, in Whitby. Argh.

UK chips are my favourite in the world, but they are qualitatively different in every way. I always get annoyed when other countries claim to copy fish and chips but serve them with fries. There isn't anywhere else in the world that you can get chips like that, so inevitably the fish and chips that try and copy it are always disappointing. I know it's controversial, but are supposed to be soggy and oily, not crunchy. It's supposed to be like eating oily potatoes. There is a reason why fish and chips is so renowned and loved, and the chips are a big part of it. They are the best in the world bar none. I only didn't mention it earlier because people find it quite offensive, because they are so much different from other chips.

I understand everything you're saying, but I somehow keep reading it as "they're supposed to be bad, that's why fish and chips are so loved, they're the best in the world at being bad".

I mean, yes, but still, I want my potatoes crunchy, not soggy and oily.

I'm a sucker for thin, salty fries. I know they're low quality but my mouth enjoys them