You can always ask the staff. Some will take the plate back and remove them. Other places will tell you to eat or share. Depending on how hungry I was if no one at the table wanted them I would eat around them or take them home for later. They would be thrown away if not eaten when the staff took away the plate.

It usually gets offered for me to keep so I do.

The few times that my order was not right, it was taken away and replaced.

I usually thank them for correcting my order..... :-D

I worked in several different types of restaurants over the years. Restaurants factor food loss in their business process. Fries are not expensive so there's no great concern and the correction may be as simple as bringing you out a plate of the correct fries, leaving the incorrect ones on the table. They'll just get tossed if either brought back to the kitchen or left on the table uneaten.

Other items may have a higher cost but an incorrectly prepared order would be chalked up to food loss. In any case, the correction should always be made.

Of course you are free to eat them!! What do you prove by having them thrown away?

Anything plated and served will have to be tossed, so whether it's fries or caviar, eat up!

I would have eaten them without a second thought! I often get the wrong order brought to me so they usually take the whole plate but it they leave the plate, I assume anything on it is fair game. I figure it's inconvenience tax. :)

Yep...eat them. Or....they would be thrown out.

I once ate out with a friend and neighbor. She ordered extra gravy, as a complaint, as in there wasn't enough in the first place, for her chicken fried steak...no extra charge....then asked for a doggie bag to take it home with her.....for her dog to eat. She said she liked to share her meal with her dog. That....I thought was uncalled for,

I don't know standard restaurant protocol, but it's always reassuring if they leave the wrong order on the table.

Eat them. They cannot serve these to another customer so they would just be thrown out.

Generally if I ask to correct my order I do not want what was served by mistake. If I ordered sweet potato fries and got regular fries I would not eat the regular fries. That would be too much and I would prefer to eat what I ordered. However, if others at the table would like the fries, I would hope they would eat them instead of them going to waste.

Any time I have been served a wrong order, from steak overdone to wrong fries, the plate has been taken away & what I ordered was brought back. I would feel strange eating the fries....after all, why bother to ask for the other ones if you are ok with eating these?

I am probably tainted because I have a sister-in-law that complains about her food every time we go out to eat, she is looking for a free meal & often gets it. It is embarrassing to me & I don't go out with her often anymore. And these complaints are very unrealistic. For example, she ordered a burger and it came with tomato & lettuce. She said "I did not order a burger with lettuce & tomato"....ummm...unless you have an allergy (she doesn't) why not just remove them & eat the stupid burger? Jeez!

We had a friend who couldn't tolerate onions. One night we went out for pizza with him and his wife. We ordered our pizza without onions. When it came out of the oven, it was covered in onions and he reminded them that the order had been for no onions. They told us to keep the pizza while they made a new one. Since the other three of us didn't have a problem with onions, we dug in while he waited for the no onion pizza to arrive. None of us felt bad about it since the mistake wasn't our error and we were told to keep the pizza.

Usually, though, when I order something and it comes out wrong, the plate is taken away and new food brought to the table as Lisa mentioned above. I sometimes think that they just take the plate back to the kitchen and scrape off or remove the offending item or add whatever was missing unless it's something like the food wasn't prepared properly or what was brought wasn't even close to what I ordered.