The Grand Burger Challenge - Round Two - The Big Mac
Ok, so there is definitely a bit of a food snob in me.
It wasn’t an especially auspicious start though! I was genuinely feeling a bit odd as I walked down towards the McDonalds near my flat. This is a place I pass every morning and the smell of frying oil hits you like a shovel when you get within twenty metres. This is not a smell I find especially pleasant, especially at 7.30am. Regardless I soldier on, I’m not here for the smell; I’m here for the taste.
And so apparently are the pigeons. It was like a Daphne du Maurier short story. One member of staff was standing legs together, feet out in a v-shape, desperately trying to stop a very determined pigeon from running into the kitchen. This bird just kept right there at his feet, darting back and forward trying to find a way through. The guy was sweeping at it with his feet, strongly encouraging it back into the quad area, but the bird was having none of it. Eventually it slipped past him and darted under one of the units. They laughed. I cried.
I asked for a Big Mac and a medium fries (the fries I recall being the main reason for actually going to McDonalds), and handed over $6.35. So there is no denying that this is a cheap lunch, however this is Sydney, a city that excels in providing a good lunch for relatively little money. For 35 cents less I could have bought three large sushi rolls with tempura prawns. This would have to be a pretty good burger and fries to represent real value for money.
Carrying that McDonalds up the road I felt as if I was clutching a bag with ‘Big Frank’s Quality Second Hand Sex Aids’ emblazoned across the side (no offence Frank, it’s a fine shop you have). That is food snobbery my friends.
As Weepix sat on the couch looking at me with utter disgust I opened up the bag and retrieved my lunch.
They say the first bite is with the eye. Good job that’s not true because this burger looked like shit. I know it’s a cliché, but if they could make them even vaguely resemble the photo on the sign that would help. This looks like crap.
I’m not here for appearances though. Snails look pretty grim and I love them.
So here goes. My first McDonalds burger in about 20 years…….
And it’s not that bad. The first taste is the overwhelming flavour provided by the ‘special sauce’, it drowns everything else out. Then you get pickle and burger bun. The bun is almost as sweet as a brioche and kind of collapses into mush in your mouth. Honestly I don’t really get much beef taste at all on the first bite. Second bite is more of the same but I must have got more of the patties as there is a slight beefy flavour in there too.
As a bit of an experiment I break off a bit of bun with ‘special sauce’ on it and cover it with pickle. When I eat this it’s almost exactly the same taste as the whole burger. It would seem that the beef is almost superfluous when it comes to Big Macs.
The one thing I really struggle with is the ‘cheese’. This stuff is absolutely revolting. It tastes like warm dairylee. I know that’s what I should have expected but I can’t handle it. This is not cheese.
Just as an aside, the fries are also a surprise. I remember them as crunchy golden sticks of salty goodness, and instead they are pale, limp sticks of salty crapness. The only two things they have going for them are they are hot and salty. So is salt on toast. I’m very disappointed with the fries.
So the burger wasn’t that bad. The ‘cheese’ was repellent and the beef wasn’t really present, but it didn’t taste revolting. It wasn’t particularly great either and I am sitting here with a dull stomach ache about 20 minute minutes after my last bite. I can also still taste and feel the grease from the chips in my mouth despite several glasses of water.
The thing that really struck me is that it’s not really about food; it’s about acceptable fuel. Buying it didn’t feel like ordering something to eat, it just felt like making a transaction. One of the most seductive parts of dining out is the expectation having ordered and there was none here. Obviously I didn’t expect there to be, this is a different type of dining experience, but it did make me wonder ‘what’s the point’.
What I eat is really important to me as it brings me enormous pleasure. I’m planning lunch at breakfast and dinner at lunch. I don’t view it as something to get over and done with as quickly as possible so I can get back to the ‘important stuff’. Eating is the important stuff.
To be fair to McDonalds that is exactly how they advertise their food and I’ve probably been a bit unfair to them. I struggle with the idea that people don’t care about what they eat. I think most people find that with things they particularly care about. I have judged people eating in McDonalds in the past as ‘food morons’ with not a single collective taste bud between them, when in fact they probably just don’t consider it to be that big a deal. Fair enough say I.
So it was a cathartic experience all in all. The Big Mac wasn’t very good all in all but the only thing that actually tasted bad was the cheese. The rest of it was just a bit synthetic and the surprisingly un-beefy. I won’t be picking up another one anytime soon but I also won’t be judging those that do……
…..not much anyway ;)
