BOOTHBAY, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Bet's Famous Fish Fry is one of those places you drive past and say, 'Wait, I need to turn around.'
Just before Boothbay Harbor sits Bet Finocchiaro's small shack off Route 27. In her 24th season, she says she's never once advertised.
Finocchiaro goes through 700 pounds of potatoes each week, from Green Thumb Farms out of Fryeburg. Freshly cut into skinny fries, they're mixed into the fryer with homemade chips as well.
I appreciate Finocchiaro for a number of reasons. She tells it like it is and it's clear she's proud of hard, earnest work. It's that mentality that drove her to create a good French fry, which she admitted was difficult at first.
"You would think it would be the simplest thing in the world, frying a potato, but it isn't," she said. "A lot of potatoes have a lot of sugar in them, so what happens is, when you drop them, they burn immediately and they're raw. I tried soaking them, and that didn't work."
After a number of different trials and subsequent errors, Finocchiaro's sister, who is a chef, helped her find just the right seed.