Many times I get cold and cardboard crispy chickens. It sucks. And 99% of the time it's from the drive thru..
I've been to multiple understaffed McDonald's and man does the quality suck. When they have staff things are decent but now I can predict when a McDonald's will be bad.
The Mac Wrap is the worst thing I have ever tasted at any McDonalds, by a huge margin. Just...weird.
That said, I am glad they are innovating -- other things introduced in the past decade or so are quite good (and the Big & Tasty is now just $1.79 where I live -- perhaps half the price of what it used to be.)
I only have experience with McDonald's in Western Europe, and here the food is not good. The pattys seem like the meat was thoroughly grinded to a smooth paste. The bread doesn't have any flavour, and because it's in a closed package with the rest it becomes soaked and soft from the steam. The worst part is the cheese (if you can call it that -- it doesn't look or taste like cheese at all). The fries are okayish. On the rare occasion that I'm with a group of people who want to eat something at McDonalds, I usually take a salad with the sauce in a separate package, because even the salad sauce doesn't taste good.
This was surprising to me. You can make a much better burger than McDonalds in 10 minutes with standard equipment. Just take some minced meat, form it into a flat cylinder, rub some olive oil salt and pepper, cook it in a frying pan, after you turned it around add (real) cheese on top and cook the other side, slice a bread in two and roast it a little in the same pan, and stack up the burger with some lettuce, tomato and some mustard and/or ketchup. Why can't a company whose primary purpose is to make burgers not make a burger half as good? It's not like the ingredients here are more expensive. Or do people really prefer McD's burgers?
>McDonald's and other franchisers ... you wouldn't be able to prepare at home in that quality.
What do you mean - McDonalds is piss poor quality fast food. It's ok at best but nowhere near close home cooked meal. Even 20min cooking w/o a microwave oven should produce decent results.
Two things about McDonalds highlight the problem with the company: they feel the need to tell you that burgers are in fact made out of beef, and you can't get breakfast after 10AM.
In the mid-80s, when I was in elementary school and was the prototypical kid hassling my parents to go to McDonalds, people actually flipped burgers, shook some salt and garlic powder on them and put it on a toasted bun. It was hot, greasy and delicious.
Now, a McDonalds burger is some sort of steamed monstrosity. It isn't greasy, tastes engineered, and is usually cold upon delivery.
Cooking a 5mm thick burger on a grill is not rocket science, and every greasy spoon on the planet can successfully put together an egg sandwich 24x7. Get back to the basics and cook some food.
What do you think they're going to do at a McDonald's if you say that? They're going to throw it away and make you a new one.
The reality is most of the food McDonald's serves nowadays is served cold. It's an unfortunate side effect of moving away from actually grilling meat to just warming it in trays.
can you expand on that at all? the last time i've eaten anything at mcdonalds it looked at tasted as though it had been sitting in a warmer for hours and i felt terrible after eating it and the customer service was indifferent at best. the only thing i've noticed them executing well is trying to at least stay somewhat modern and trendy with the store designs.
McDonald's cooks its quarter pounders from fresh beef (hasn't been frozen since 2018). Their Roma tomatoes are also, you know, fresh. Just like their lettuce. Their Egg McMuffins are cracked from fresh eggs onto the griddle.
They deep-fry their fries, good luck doing that at home in your microwave.
All their sandwiches are hand-assembled. Buns and english muffins all freshly toasted.
McDonald's is an actual restaurant. They're not just reheating and repackaging. Unless by your standard every restaurant falls under this category...?
This is McDonald's we're talking about. They are very much more concerned with mad science than taste. They're concerned with keeping costs low and their food easy to transport, store and cook (or reheat).
McDonalds as a company has fine food quality based on the fresh hot and delicious McDonalds I got in Japan. I believe McDonalds US has a store management and personnel problem, i.e. that no one gives a shit. Even after the “fresher” Quarter Pounders the meat was warmer but I sometimes got buns so dry and stale they were falling apart in the box. Sure theres lots of timers and tech to make sure workers can’t burn the fries but it appears to me no one in charge of overall quality or consistency.
You're not wrong, it tastes like cardboard.
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