Chili cheese fries is the dish you order at 2 a.m. and apologize for in the morning. It is not the dish you bring to a televised cook-off against Bobby Flay. Unless, that is, you are the chef at Idle Hour in Quincy, Massachusetts, and you have decided to win on confidence.
Ashley Gaboriault did exactly that. The technique here is the chili itself: a slow-braised meat sauce built on toasted cumin, chiles, and beef stock — not the ground-beef pan sauce most people make. Plus a hand-cut fry that holds crisp under hot toppings, plus a cheese sauce built on béchamel-and-cheddar rather than canned Velveeta.
Three components, all done from scratch. Bobby skipped one.