Milltown - Chapel Hill

Fellow hounds,

Went to Milltown yday. Mixed experience: Grilled chicken sandwhich was fine, fries were pretty bad (limp & soggy). Beer was uniformly good though.

If someone knows the chef and/or owner of the place, please let him/her know that the fries desperately need some work.

[sabarrett]

I'm a huge Milltown fan. Great outside seating when it's warm, excellent bar food, huge selection of beers I've never heard of (which is quite a feat) and I like the pommes, even if they are a bit soggy. Judge not an establishment by frites alone....

[SenorSuarez]

Franklin Street near the border of Chapel Hill and Carborro

[rossgrady]

Technically, it's in Carrboro, and by then it's Main St (when Franklin & Rosemary come together, the result is Main St. in Carrboro). It's next door to Surplus Sid's. It's the place that used to be Temple Ball, the headshop where the dude got busted for having like a pound of pot in the office.

[gyp7318]

Where is Milltown? I've never heard of it.

[LulusMom]

I always ask for the fries extra crispy. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. Still and all, I"m a big fan of the place.

[SenorSuarez]

If you go to Milltown, you should be going there for 3 things: beer, mussels, and fries. If you don't get all 3, you might as well stay home. The german style sausage plate is a good addition as well. :)

This is what I said -- and I took some guff for it. I had a big plate of soggy fries. It was as if they had been fried and then steamed. If McDonalds can more or less get it right I don't see why everyone else can't.
The best local fries, in my experience, are served at Tyler's. Not only are they crispy, but they have a nice garlic flavor. Tyler's serves the best burger as well.

David A.

You should try Town Hall Grill's too then. They are also of the crispy, garlicky camp -- perhaps even moreso than Tyler's. I believe HeelsSoxHound also made this observation on an earlier visit. But yeah, I thought they were the best fries I'd had in town (or at least on par with Tyler's).

Not to get too off-topic (and then deleted, again), but I think more credit should be given to places like Tyler's & THG for cranking out such good fries. It's really not such an easy process. I love McD's fries too, but all those fast-food places are able to do that b/c they've got huge-scale manufacturing plants that are able to process the potatoes to get 'em to the point where a pimpled teenager simply has to dunk them in the fryer and then some timer will tell him/her when to fish them out.

word to all nab said-- the parcook is a practice altogether underutilized in this area, but tyler's and thg def get it right. check out the burger too, david--you won't be disappointed. fish and chips are pretty darn good too. some of the lightest, crispiest batter around.

[MOOKIECOOKIE]

yeah, these fries are the worst, and people all over durham talk about how great they are. the owners of milltown also own the federal, where they have these crappy "frites." my supervisor at work raves about them and i've never been able to eat these things, even when i'm wasted. to make it worse, i like to hit up the new resto by the old cooks at the fed, (piedmont in durham) and they have the frites as well with every lunch order. luckily their side salad is great, so i don't have to look at the free fries next to my sammy. on a side note- you have to try the piedmont pastrami. they smoke it in house and it's absolutely delicious ("the king of the smoked meats" -george costanza). if only they had rye....