Japanese Fast Food Chain puts French Fry Ice Cream Sundaes on the Menu

Japanese fast food chain First Kitchen (owned by Wendy's® franchisee in Japan, Wendy's Japan) has a bit of an image problem, in that it really doesn’t have much of an image. McDonald’s is everywhere, with its high-profile cross-promotions. Mos Burger has a reputation for high quality ingredients, and Lotteria has outright insanity as its marketing hook.

By comparison, First Kitchen is often so low-key that it’s easy to overlook the chain, but we’re sure that its newest item, French fry sundaes, will help keep it in people’s minds.

Going on this week at First Kitchen and First Kitchen/Wendy’s branches nationwide are two types of Dessert Potato, both of which start by taking a plate of French fries and adding a swirl of Hokkaido dairy-sourced vanilla ice cream.

From there, the Choco Sundae Potato adds chocolate sauce and sprinkles. If you’re looking for a more Japanese taste, the Cream Zenzai Potato adds a second dash of Hokkaido flavor with azuki sweet red beans supplied by the northern island plus kuromitsu syrup for even more tempting sweetness.

First Kitchen is touting the new desserts as a delicious exercise in contrasting extremes, with the bed of hot, crisp potatoes covered with cold, melty ice cream.

Some of the fries still have their skins, which means there’ll probably also be some interplay between bitter and sweet flavors, likely giving the new desserts more complexity they’d seem to have at first glance. And while you could say that adding ice cream to fried potato slices screws up their nutritional balance, French fries aren’t really all that healthy anyway, so you may as well make them as delicious as possible.

Both Dessert Potato offerings will be available from January 11, priced at 450 yen (US$4) each.

First Kitchen hasn’t specified whether they’ll become permanent parts of the menu, though, so you probably don’t want to dally if you’re looking to compare these to your memories of McDonald’s dearly departed chocolate sauce French fries.