Carne Asada Fries Survived an 18-Minute Burbank Drive Like Champions

We ordered the carne asada fries from Golden Hour Tacos on a Tuesday evening, paid 12.50 dollars at the counter, and drove 18 minutes home across Burbank. This was a pickup order, which meant the fries had every opportunity to steam themselves into a sad pile. They did not.

The packaging did most of the work. The fries ride in a foam clamshell with a vented lid, and the container arrived sitting upright in a paper bag. Vents matter. Steam escaped instead of soaking in, so the fries kept their crunch along the top layer and stayed warm all the way down.

On arrival the temperature read hot. Not warm, not lukewarm: hot, the way the kitchen had handed it over. The cheese stayed melted and pull-able, the guacamole was still bright green, and the sour cream had not liquefied into the salsa. Roughly 40 bites of food for 12.50 dollars puts the price per bite at about 0.31 dollars, which is excellent value for a dish this filling.

The trip home is where most fry orders fail. Eighteen minutes of Burbank curves is usually enough to turn a loaded fry into a soggy one, but this batch arrived with structure. Nothing had slid, nothing had spilled, and the container itself was clean on the outside.

We would reorder these in a heartbeat, and we have. This is the current benchmark for what takeout fries can be.