The regional holdouts.

Among the fifty-four chains on Frypedia, ten are what we'd call regional holdouts: chains that have stayed geographically focused, refused to standardize to whatever the national big-chain default is, and serve fries with a distinctive character — whether that character is beef tallow, an unusual potato variety, a regional seasoning, or just a stubborn commitment to a particular cut.

The regional holdouts are not the Cold Eight. Most of them share fryers with breaded items. Several use beef tallow. A few have idiosyncratic seasonings (Cajun, lemon-pepper, ranch-salted). What unites them is that their fry isn't trying to be a national fry. It's trying to be its fry. That's a meaningful posture in a category dominated by standardized QSR product.

Here are the chains worth knowing about, why they're interesting, and what the fry tastes like.

Dick's Drive-In (Pacific Northwest).

Seattle institution since 1954. Three items on the menu: burgers, fries, milkshakes. Nothing breaded, nothing battered. The fryer is — by menu architecture — the cleanest dedicated fryer in American fast food. Sunflower oil. Hand-cut Kennebec-family potatoes from Washington State. We wrote about this at length in "The Cold Eight" essay. Dick's is the closest thing to a perfect fry operation in the country, and it exists because the chain has refused to add a chicken sandwich for seventy-two years.

P. Terry's Burger Stand (Texas).

Austin-born, now statewide. 100% canola oil, dedicated fryer confirmed in a Guest Relations email that has been cited in the celiac community for years. Hand-cut fries from Russet potatoes, served in their signature cup. P. Terry's is the cleanest Texas-based fry operation, and one of the rare regionals where the fry stands alone as a destination rather than being a sidekick to the burger.

Hopdoddy Burger Bar (Texas, expanding).

Also Austin-born, also committed to clean fry operations. Non-GMO rice bran oil — the only chain on Frypedia using rice bran as its primary fry oil. Kennebec potatoes. Dedicated fryer. In-house gluten-free buns. Hopdoddy is the modern version of what a regional holdout looks like when the founder was paying attention to the Cold Eight playbook. Founded 2010; now expanding through the Sunbelt.

Portillo's (Chicago).

Chicago institution since 1963. Italian beef is the identity; fries cooked in vegetable oil and beef tallow blend are continuous with that identity. Even the "shared" fryer isn't really shared in the traditional sense — Portillo's confirms that oil filtration runs across fryers, meaning that a technically "dedicated" fry fryer shares its oil with the filtration ecosystem of a gluten-cooking fryer. Every fry at Portillo's has been in oil that passed through a gluten-touching filter system. A fascinating operational story.

Whataburger (Texas).

Texas-only until recently, now expanding into the South. ZTF soybean liquid shortening. Shared fryer. Medium-cut, slightly thinner than most chains. No beef tallow. No regional seasoning. What makes Whataburger a holdout isn't the fry — it's the Whataburger monoculture the fry sits inside. For Texans, Whataburger fries are what Whataburger fries are. Any deviation would be a problem.

Steak 'n Shake (Midwest, now national).

Founded 1934. Shoestring fries in 100% beef tallow since January 2025 — before that, soybean oil blend. The tallow switch is, in our research, one of the most significant fry-formulation changes any major chain has made in the last decade. It's both a return to Steak 'n Shake's historical position (the chain was tallow-based originally) and a bet on the seed-oil-skepticism cultural moment. Read more in "The tallow reversion."

Bojangles (Southeast).

Charlotte-based, Carolinas-focused. "Bo-Tato Rounds" — cooked in beef tallow, heavily seasoned with a proprietary spice blend that includes salt, paprika, and onion powder. The seasoning is aggressive by national-chain standards, and part of why Bojangles' fries are more polarizing than most — Carolinians love them, out-of-staters often find them too salty. Fully committed to beef tallow as a brand element.

Culver's (Wisconsin, now Sunbelt).

Wisconsin-founded, Midwest-rooted, now in the Sunbelt. Canola oil, shared fryer with cheese curds, onion rings, chicken tenders, shrimp, and pork tenderloin. The Culver's fryer is one of the most crowded shared fryers we've researched — nearly every category of breaded allergen lives in that oil. The cut (medium-crinkle) and the slight Wisconsin-specific potato sourcing give it a regional character, but the shared-fryer situation makes it not celiac-safe, not dairy-safe, and caution for most restrictions.

Braum's (Oklahoma & Texas).

Braum's runs its own dairy and its own vertically-integrated beef supply. The fry side is simpler: vegetable oil blend, shared fryer with onion rings and corn dogs. Nothing extraordinary about the fry itself, but the context is unusual — a chain that vertically integrates dairy and beef, but outsources the fry to a standard supplier. The implicit message: the fry isn't the priority. Braum's is about ice cream and burgers. The fry is a sidekick.

Runza (Nebraska).

Nebraska-only, for complicated cultural reasons (the Runza — a beef-cabbage-onion pocket sandwich — is a Nebraska specialty brought over by Volga German settlers, and the chain built around it in 1949). The fries are a sidekick to the Runza, cooked in vegetable oil in a shared fryer. What makes Runza a holdout worth knowing is the category itself — Nebraska's the only state where you can have a "chain-burger" experience that isn't actually about burgers, and the fry lives in that context.

What regional holdouts tell us.

The chains above don't share a fryer philosophy. Dick's Drive-In has the cleanest fryer in America; Portillo's has one of the most operationally complicated. Hopdoddy uses the rarest oil; Runza uses the most generic. Braum's doesn't even try to make the fry a point of differentiation.

What they share is refusing to be standardized. A regional holdout could, if it chose, standardize its fry to whatever the national QSR default is — soybean/canola blend, standard cut, shared fryer, generic format — and it would save money and reduce operational complexity. None of them do. The fry they serve is either a historical inheritance they've kept (Steak 'n Shake's pre-2025 soy oil, Dick's Drive-In's 1954 setup) or a deliberate differentiation they've maintained (Hopdoddy's rice bran oil, Portillo's tallow blend, Bojangles' Bo-Tato seasoning).

In a category as standardized as fast-food QSR, that refusal is valuable on its own. The regional holdouts are, collectively, the places you can still eat a fry that doesn't taste like everything else. Whether you can eat them safely for your particular diet is a different question — for that, consult the individual chain pages.