'The French fries look like they've been standing on a steam table for an hour'

So says William Gounaris, owner of the Queens restaurant Brooks 1890, in regards to how New York City's newly-effective ban on trans fats has affected his eatery's fries, as reported in today's Wall Street Journal:

Fried chicken doesn't get as crispy in the new oil, Mr. Gounaris complains, and the fries are pale and limp.

Patrons used to slather their baked potatoes and corn on the cob with margarine from a four-ounce tub at Dougie's Bar-B-Que & Grill in Brooklyn, one of a six-unit kosher restaurant chain in New York and New Jersey. By law, the restaurant, where huge portions are the norm, can now only provide petite, foil-wrapped portions of margarine. Customers "think we're making fun of them," says co-owner Barbara Landau, who says she's paying 20 percent more for kosher-certified, nondairy, trans-fat free oils and fats. [...]

The city's roughly 350 kosher restaurants have had a particularly hard time due to the prohibition on meat and dairy products being made or consumed together. "Margarine is a major staple in the kosher industry," says Yoel Schonfeld, a rabbinic coordinator for the Orthodox Union, a large, kosher-supervising agency based in New York.

The trans-fat ban boils down to this: fried food remains unhealthy, it now just tastes worse and costs more.