Did An Arby's Curly Fry Really Set A World Record?

When you order a side of curly fries with your roast beef sandwich, you might go for the large portion, since it is this Arby's fry size that gives you the most bang for your buck. Now imagine if the entire serving is just one large curly french fry. If that single twisty, crispy, potato curl happens to be the record-breaking longest curly fry in the world, that might not be a bad thing. This is exactly what Kim Medford of North Carolina discovered when she dug into her order of large curly fries from Arby's back in 2013. The lone fry in her large Arby's curly fry serving measured a whopping 38 inches. As luck would have it, Medford worked at a fabric store at the time, so she had all she needed to measure the fry accurately — a task that would otherwise be quite complicated with a curly fry. She stretched it out on the store's fabric cutting table, held it down with sewing pins, and used a tape measure to get the exact, record-breaking length. 

The curly fry appears in the World Record Academy's logs, and more importantly, it isn't Arby's first record: The chain seems to have an affinity for giant fries. Turns out, Arby's also holds an earlier Guinness World Record for the longest fry — a 24-inch piece found in a South Carolina outlet. This record was later broken in 2010, when New York-based co-workers John Benbenek and Ryan Vedder discovered a a 34-inch fry. They decided to store their famous spud snack in the freezer and even considered selling it on eBay. 

The reason these curly fries are so special is not because of the exceptionally large potato they may have come from. The way restaurants make curly fries is by spiral-cutting an entire spud, so a 38-inch curly fry doesn't mean it was made from a potato that was 38 inches long or even 38 inches in diameter. Instead, as an Arby's spokesperson explained to HuffPost, the noteworthy fact is that the record-breaking fry survived multiple manufacturing steps to reach the customer unbroken — something that Medford called a "miracle" in an interview with WLOS News 13. 

Arby's has a standard cut size for its curly fries, but that controls the fries' thickness, not their length. After being cut, the fries go through seasoning, frying, freezing, transporting, and refrying at the restaurant – and the record-breaking fry seemingly bypassed all these steps. Perhaps it may be because while extra-long straight-cut fries would stick out and be noticeable from a mile away, long curly fries can sneak into servings without being noticed. For what it's worth, in addition to offering the occasional record-breaking specimen, the Arby's side also did quite well in our fast food french fry rankings – though that may have had more to do with the twisty shape and flavor of the curly fries than their length.