According to our tester, TGI Fridays' superiority came down to three factors: The quality of the meat, a generous serving of caramelized onions which worked well with the sharp cheddar hit, and (rather surprisingly for a frozen product) the bread. "It's a simple yeast-based roll, but it has that sweeter taste and pillowy texture of a potato bun," we wrote. "It was the only bun that really impressed me out of the bunch, so I believe that deserves extra kudos."
Drama aside, the brand has become associated with some iconic American appetizers, with potato skins being the restaurant's strongest point of pride. As TGI Fridays claims, one of the restaurant's crafty cooks created the concoction one night in 1974 with leftover potato scraps. As the story goes, he dropped the excess scooped-out potato into the deep-fryer, seasoned it liberally, added shredded cheese and crispy bacon, and ta-da - a potato skin.
The flagship TGI Fridays opened on Manhattan's Upper East Side in 1965, but it wasn't the family-friendly operation that exists today. The first T.G.I. Friday's, as it was called then - the company dropped the periods and the apostrophe in 2013 - was the world's first singles bar. The bar was founded by perfume salesman Alan Stillman, an Upper East Side bachelor who himself was looking for a place to mingle with other singles.