The Worst Food Option At Dave's Hot Chicken Has So Much Potential

Dave's Hot Chicken has exploded in popularity since its humble beginnings in a parking lot, gathering notable celebrity supporters like Drake and Samuel L. Jackson along the way thanks to its tasty offerings. While there's a lot to enjoy at this fast food chain, we decided to rank 16 menu items at Dave's Hot Chicken from best to worst and found the cheese fries to be severely lacking.

The fries themselves aren't the problem; in fact, the plain fries ended up in eighth place, the middle of a generally positive list. The light dusting of spice seasons them perfectly without overpowering that classic french fry taste. All in all, we felt that Dave's fries were good enough to deserve a spot in our next ranking of fast food fries. 

Unfortunately, it's the cheese sauce that falls flat, which is a disappointment considering Dave's mac and cheese actually took the top spot in our ranking of the best and worst fast food mac and cheese. It's clear that the chain can make a good cheese sauce because of that dish, but whatever it uses in its cheese fries just doesn't make the cut. It's also easily the worst ingredient in the top loaded fries, which was buoyed to fourth place by everything else on them. When the cheese sauce brings down the ratings of the dish it's supposed to shine in, it ends up just tasting like wasted potential.

Based on Chowhound's review, two things went terribly wrong with the sauce on Dave's Hot Chicken's cheese fries. The first was its watery consistency — the cheese sauce sank to the bottom of the container rather than clinging to the fries themselves. This makes the dish totally miss out on the potential of the fries it uses, especially since crinkle cut fries can hold more sauce because of their increased surface area.

The second issue was the cheese sauce's overall lack of flavor, which drew an unfavorable comparison to school cafeteria nacho cheese. Without any other toppings to hide behind like it does in the top loaded fries, the sauce just ends up disappointing anyone who was looking to get their cheese fix. Given how bland the cheese sauce is, you're probably better off ordering the plain fries and jazzing them up with your own sauce at home.

If you want to unlock the full potential of Dave's cheese fries, you'll need to make a sauce that improves upon both the flavor and consistency of the restaurant's sauce. The flavor is a quick fix — avoid the most common mistake that sabotages cheese sauce and use a blend of several cheeses instead of just one. To fix the consistency, mixing in sodium citrate is a scientifically proven trick for perfectly melty cheese sauces that don't feel watery; if it's not in your kitchen, you can probably find Alka-Seltzer unexpected secret ingredient for smoother cheese sauce in your medicine cabinet.