#crisscuts

MCDONALD’S CALIFORNIA BURGER I did it, Mum! I went to McDonald’s! Phwoar, it’s been absolutely ages. Don’t know why I’m not in there every day to be fair. I mean, come on, what else is there to do these days? You know it’s Summer (is it Summer?) when McDonaghee’s drops their USA range. Oh shit boy, it’s popping off like a cowboy on a bucking bronco! Giddy up! There’s been all these burger brioche trends of the last latelies but for a real taste of America…you gotta get down McDonald’s. Right? The concept goes that they introduce a new US inspired burger each week for five weeks or some such. I wish I was such an intrepid explorer that I’d be down the front each week Monday morning come the close of breakfast; sadly, alas. There’s one with a nacho on it, there’s one with BBQ sauce on it, hell there’s even one with cheese sauce on it! Sadly it was cheese sauce week (AKA California burger) today and so I ended up with probs my least desired of the bunch. Sad times. Well, not really, it’s never a sad time in McDonald’s (unless you get a Filet ‘oh’ Fish). Have you ever seen anyone sad in there? Hell no! Everyone’s having an absolute whale. The California burger also featured bacon, beef patty, “slivered” onions, cheese slices too incase you weren’t cheesing your t’s off already on the cheese sauce. Did I mention lettuce as well? You know the drill. So it was a bit of a long boat, it looked more Nordic when I opened its casket. Quids in, I thought. I should mention, at this juncture, that I opted to supersize my meal (YODO!) and I told McDaddy to give me the “Crisscuts” upgrade on the fries. Weird name, felt a bit weird saying it…crisscuts. So called because it’s a criss-cross lattice work with a touch of the crinkle cut about it…just got that now, crisscuts! Of course! They came with a sour cream and chive dip. My drink was a Coke, thanks for asking. Lady Legend plumped for the quarter pounder meal, medium size with a coke too; great minds! My McDonald’s method is to concentrate on the fries (or crisscuts) at first, neglecting the burger until at least halfway through the fries and then I pop the box like I’m not bothered and it’s like “let’s go”, or whatever. Of course whoever I’m with is already halfway through their burger at this time and they’ve usually asked a question like, “have you not had any of your burger yet?”. Guess I do it this way to prolong the inevitable: the end/death. I did that today but with these special edition burgers I’m always a little keener to unbox. It was big and flat, not unlike a tramp’s shoe. The burger was leaking out of the bun at all sides (the side boob of the burger world) and I did not mind a jot. The “white sauce”, seemingly applied by palette knife, gave me a little more cause for concern. Lady Legend just labelled it a carbonara burger and she’s not far wrong! I’m not anti-white sauce (I’ve had some great times with mayonnaise) but I’m a mite troubled by cheese sauce if I sit back to think about it. There was a lot of white sauce knocking about; white sauce on my burger and white sauce dip (the aforementioned sour cream and chive) for my crisscuts. Too much sauce on a burger makes me less likely to enjoy it fully. You can’t relax if you constantly fear leakage from your bun’s back end (as in life), it can make the bun plates shift too which is obviously far from ideal. I may have spoken about this in prior blogs but too much sauce also means that you have to look at your burger more, and one of my pet peeves is people who look at their burgers too much. It’s possible to eat something without constantly looking at it, try it! People who stare at their burgers an inch from their face, rotating it, looking round corners and angling their heads for the next bite…ugh. Get a room! Anyway, cheese sauce yeah, not ideal but actually ok! I didn’t open the bun so I can’t tell you about the exact spec under the hood but I could taste that all elements were present. As usual you’re left with a clump of fallen lettuce in your bun box. It’s like the fast food equivalent of dunno, a sock in a washing machine? Sweetcorn in a po…oh it’s a gift actually. I love eating the lettuce scraps at the end of the show, everything at McDonald’s tastes like a burger. The lettuce tastes like a burger. How have they done that? No gherkins on the California burger by the way, I did miss that. I didn’t miss much else. I was nervous about missing the fries due to my crisscuts selection but the crisscuts turned out to be a lot of fun; they were suitably crunchy with a satisfying size mix (plus one rogue fry for the win). The dipping sauce was stronger than you’d imagine but that’s no bad thing. On finishing my meal I felt light as a leaf. I asked Lady Legend what she would wish for if she had one wish. I didn’t listen to what she said but when she asked me I said, “more crisscuts!”. “But you could just go up there and buy more food”, she said. “They wouldn’t serve me”, I said, “you’ve had enough they’d say”. I fantasised silently about going to the counter and ordering the exact same thing, like I’d just come in, wondering if the person who’d served me last time would say anything. I supposed that no-one had ever done that. I bet no-one has ever done that without prefacing their order with “me again!”, laughing and rocking back on their heels slightly.