Probably whichever joint you wander into after a big night, right?

Fast food is, for many, a guilty pleasure, and the next day’s hangover can often be made worse by flashbacks of shovelling a burger or two down the hatch in the wee hours of the morning.

That’s why a fast food joint’s chips are so important, because the losers the next day are somewhat negated if your only purchase was chips.

Oh, and your vegetarian friend can’t hate on you for chomping on some potatoes.

Our friends over at Business Insider decided to put some of SA’s most popular fast food joints to the test with regards their spuds, assembling an eight-person tasting team for the task.

There were five joints in the reckoning – Mochachos, McDonald’s, Steers, Burger King, and RocoMamas.

Each tester rated the chips out of 10, with criteria that included taste and presentation (not at all important at 3AM post-bender, but OK), and here is what they found:

Burger King Large chips – R21

These chips didn’t go down that well. One of our tasters believed the chips tasted powdery, while another said they tasted like “frozen chips that were later reheated”. Nice enough, but tasteless without sauces.

A paltry 46% rating for Burger King. I’d give their burgers a worse rating, to be honest.

McDonald’s Large Chips – R20,50

“McDonald’s chips are only good when they are hot,” says one taster. (All of the chips cooled down slow slightly as we had to take pictures first.)

Also, McDonald’s chips normally come salted, but for some reason ours were not.

According to the McDonald’s loyalists among our tasters, the chips taste amazing with the chain’s spicy sauce. But with the normal tomato sauce thrown into the bag, even she had to admit that there were better options out there.

They gave Macca’s chips a 58% rating, but there are a number of flaws here. Never let the chips cool down – that’s tantamount to heresy.

It’s like when you see people taking photos of food for their Instagram accounts, then uploading the image after copious alterations (#nofilter is a lie), then complaining that the food isn’t hot enough.

Mochachos Beeg Chips – R39,90

These chips smelled wonderful, and while they didn’t look that wonderful, they were surprisingly delicious.

Still, our tasters believed the fact that you have to buy the sauce separately (no sachets are included) is a major drawback.

A solid 64% rating.

RocoMamas Large Chips – R40

The RocoMamas chips were spicy, but had a dry aftertaste.

The panel thought that a sauce would improve the taste – it’s good enough, but not on its own.

The panel has spoken, and it’s a 66% rating.

Drum roll for their winner – Steers Classic Large Chips – R27,90

“They taste like slap-chips and (are nice and) oily,” according to one taster.

According to our panel of tasters, the thing that made them stand out above the rest was that they tasted like potatoes. Steers was also praised for the spice on its chips.

Racking up an impressive 79% rating, it’s Steers on top of the pile.

We should probably just point out one pretty glaring omission – how can you run a test on chips and not taste what Nando’s have to offer?

Seth reckons they’re the best out there, and seeing as though he pays the bills, we’ll let him have that one.

See you at Orange Street Engen early Saturday morning, making some bad life decisions.

[source:businsider]