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I recently posted an article about discontinued snack foods, and many of our readers pointed out that some of the foods were still available in other countries. As it turns out, fast food companies operate in a similar manner, offering local favorites to other countries that they would never consider selling in America. Here are a few American fast food establishments and the dishes they don’t offer in America.
In Canada, poutine, fries covered in cheese curds and gravy, is offered at almost every fast food restaurant, but BK offers their own varieties that fit in with the rest of their food –most notably, the Angry Poutine with fried onions and peppers on top.
In Puerto Rico, mallorcas, sweet pastry buns, are a popular breakfast treat and Burger King takes full advantage of the popularity of these buns by offering the King Mallorca, filled with ham, eggs and three different cheeses. If you want something even more filling, you might want to try their Enormous Omelet, which isn’t an omelet at all, but actually one of the restaurant’s long hamburger buns filled with a hamburger patty, two eggs, bacon and cheese. Later in the day, you can always snack on some King Wings, which are buffalo wings marinated in honey –why aren’t these sold in America yet?
In many countries, including the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico, you can enjoy the deliciously fatty Cheesy Whopper, which features a deep fried disc of cheese on top of a standard Whopper.
Personally, I want to try the Hawaiian BK Chicken available in New Zealand, which is like all the other chicken sandwiches Burger King sells, only it features bacon and pineapple. Sign me up!
The variety of KFC’s international menus is simply astounding, as the American version exclusively limits itself to fried chicken and a few sides, while the international franchises seem to have no limits on what they serve. On the more standard side, there is the Fillet Tower Burger, which is available throughout Europe and other locations, which is essentially just a chicken sandwich topped with a hashbrown. On the other end of the spectrum is the menu from Thailand, which features stir fries, a tuna and corn salad, fish fingers (like chicken fingers, but fish) and a donut filled with shrimp meat. China offers a similarly strange menu compared to the standard KFC fare, as it includes corn salad, beef wraps, red bean porridge, shrimp burgers and an egg and vegetable soup.
more …
It’s prepared on a bed of rice in a rice cooker, which magically makes everything healthier. Be sure to use all of food-like products included in the meal. Yes, even the Coke Zero. Pour it in. Cook for a few minutes and then serve with chopsticks. Read the step-by-step instructions provided by one brave culinary explorer at the link.
Link -via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo: Rocket News 24
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The ad agency Leo Burnett, maker of clever campaigns like landmine stickers and human billboards, designed this glorious billboard. It is shaped like a fry box. Yellow lights projecting upwards like a pillar of fire guide the hungry forward from up to three miles away.
Link -via That’s Nerdalicious! | Photo: Leo Burnett
Quick:
who is the typical customer of McDonald's? If you answer "the poor,"
you'd be wrong.
See, contrary to conventional wisdom, the poor actually don't eat a lot at McDonald's, but people in the middle class do:
Leigh and colleague DaeHwan Kim analyzed 1994-96 data from the Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals and the accompanying Diet and Health Knowledge Survey. The data included responses from 5,000 Americans who were asked about restaurant dining habits, income, race, gender, age and education.
The researchers found that people visited fast-food restaurants more often as their household income increased — at least up to a point. Fast-food visits rose along with annual income up to $60,000; beyond that, visits started to drop back down, replaced by full-service, sit-down dining at slightly higher prices.
Based on the data, the researchers described the typical fast-food consumer as a lower-middle income head of household, who is budget-conscious and harried and likes the convenience and low price of fast food, compared with other restaurants. Poor people, by contrast, can't easily afford fast-food "value meals," and the poorest, who may rely on the FNS Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, certainly can't use food stamps at McDonald's.
The
McRib sandwich is back, and with it, the horde of cult-like fans of the
McDonald's pork sandwich.
Despite its name, the McRib sandwich actually contains no rib meat. But what exactly is it made of?
The Week explains some of the 70 ingredients of the McRib (which you may want to skip if you're a fan of the sandwich):
How many ingredients are there?
At face value, the sandwich contains just pork, onions, and pickle slices slathered in barbecue sauce and laid out on a bun. But the truth is, there are roughly 70 ingredients. The bun alone contains 34, says TIME's Melnick. In addition to chemicals like ammonium sulfate and polysorbate 80, the most egregious may be azodicarbonamide — "a flour-bleaching agent most commonly used in the manufactur[ing] of foamed plastics like gym mats the and soles of shoes." According to McDonald's own ingredient list, the bun also includes calcium sulfate and ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, among other chemicals.
Link (Photo: The Impulsive Buy/Flickr)
We’ve already learned that Grimace has a dark, criminal past. But the 1970s specification manual at How to Be a Retronaut also reveals that, at some point, Mayor McCheese lost his seat. Or he stopped holding his sham elections. It’s a bit ambiguous.
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Behold, the world’s largest Big Mac. The 14-foot-tall sandwich lives in the North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s, which also serves as the official Big Mac Museum. It was created for the Big Mac’s 40th anniversary in 2008. Pictured with the giant burger is Jim Delligatti, a franchisee who created the real thing back in 1967.
If you’re really curious, you can check out the official unveiling of the World’s Largest Big Mac featuring Ronald McDonald himself.
Link via Insanewiches
Photo: Henry Ray Abrams/AP
Photo Credit: Tomin Taipei
Here is a very graphic depiction of the Italians giving McDonald’s a slight hint. That’s fine. No McSpaghetti for us, and I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. Think the mob financed it? Who knows. But I gotta say, I don’t think anyone will find the Hamburglar any time soon.
Since its debut in 1979, the Happy Meal has been a staple of childhood. It’s not been without its problems, though, as nutrition-conscious parents and health-promoting legislation have worked to keep McDonald’s kids’ meals within acceptable caloric standards. From the 600-calorie hamburger debut to Tuesday’s First Lady-approved changes (and a little toy trivia for good measure), check out the bumpy history of the Happy Meal on The Week. Link
Image: McDonalds.com
If you’ve ever thought Grimace from McDonaldland looks like Saquatch’s purple cousin or if you’ve ever wondered if a Charlie the Tuna sighting would cause the came controversy as a Nessie spotting, well, you’re not alone. Humorist Hudson Hongo agrees with you, and he’s posted a few corporate cryptid sightings of his own. He even caught the elusive el Chupahoagie on film…
Link via Laughing Squid
Foodies may argue that the stuff you get from McDonald’s barely qualify as food, but we ask the question above because of the actions of the company itself.
You see, McDonald’s lawyers are arguing that the fast food chain should be classified as supermarkets rather than restaurants to avoid a huge tax bill:
In a legal battle that is likely to see dozens of other fast food chains in the world’s largest country following suit, McDonald’s successfully argued that it should be classified as a food retailer for tax purposes rather than as a restaurant since many of its products are pre-packaged and sold to customers in the style of a supermarket rather than a restaurant.
It is a decision that will allow McDonald’s in Russia to continue paying ten per cent tax on its profits rather than the eighteen per cent tax levied on restaurants.
A search for the origin of a clown costume led Elyse Luray of the PBS series History Detectives to do research on how the character of Ronald McDonald came about. Several people had a hand in creating the advertising icon.
Around 1963, a McDonald’s in Washington, D.C., decided to boost business by sponsoring “Bozo’s Circus,” a children’s show featuring future “Today Show” weatherman Willard Scott.
It was very successful, increasing sales by 30 percent fairly quickly.
As part of the show, Scott created a new character, Ronald McDonald, that looked much different than the famed clown seen today.
This Ronald had a food tray for a hat and a paper cup for his nose, but Smith says corporation executives were able to see the possibilities for something even more iconic.
But it was another clown who refined the character into a company mascot. Read all about the history of the McDonalds clown at AOL Weird News. Link
Previously: Ronald McDonald’s first ad.
Photo: Reena Newman
What? You won’t stoop to eat proletariat food of McDonald’s? Perhaps all you need is a little bourgeois re-imagining.
In a project called Happier Meals for The Grid, four Toronto chefs turned a Big Mac combo (that’s burger, fries, a coke, and condiment) into a five-star meal. Well, what looks like it anyhow. This one above is by Raj and Aravind Kozhikott:
Aravind’s Open-Faced Samosas
Father-and-son team Raj and Aravind Kozhikott wanted their creation to reflect their restaurant’s Indian cuisine. To make the samosa filling, they diced the meat, mixed it with the onion and used barbecue sauce as a binding agent before wrapping it in two rolled-out-and-fried burger buns. The fries were bundled up using strips of a cut-up fry box. The cheese from the burger was scraped off the patty and used as a sauce.
Yum! Link – via The Nag on the Lake and Laughing Squid
Don Gorske loves himself a Big Mac. Actually, he loves Big Mac so much that he eats it all the time – in fact, he’s just eaten his 25,000th Big Mac (and stays perfectly healthy):
"I plan on eating Big Macs until I die," the Fond du Lac, Wis., man said. "I have no intentions of changing. It’s my favorite food. Nothing has changed in 39 years. I look forward to it every day."
Gorske, 59, says he’s in good health and that he has the checkups to prove it. His cholesterol level is low and he was given a clean bill of health two months ago during his last physical, despite the fact that he exercises minimally.
Take that, Morgan Spurlock!
Link (warning: auto-starting video clip) | Photo: Patrick Flood/The Reporter
I’m not sure whether the Hamburglar put her up to this, but a 64-year-old woman refused to stop when pulled over by police. Instead, she got herself into a McDonald’s drive-thru lane and ordered lunch:
Officer Courtney Vassell pulled up behind Spen in the drive-thru lane, and got out of the patrol car. With police lights flashing behind him, he told her to pull out into the parking lot for a traffic stop, according to a police report.
Spen, though, completed her food order, paid the bill, and then drove her bronze 2001 Chevrolet out of the parking lot and onto Northwest Sixth Court, Vassell said.
Vassell again flipped on his siren and stopped Spen outside the McDonald’s, where he said she "rolled her window down one inch and said she was not speeding and she would not roll her window down."
This great shot of two (presumably) cosplayers was shot by Steve Burt at Anime Expo 2008 in Los Angeles. Ronald Sephiroth battles Colonel Cloud. If Wendy joined in, what Final Fantasy character would she be?
Link via Popped Culture
This YouTube clip of a McDonald's commercial in Japan featuring SpongeBob straws immediately brought two things to my mind:
1. What the heck is in that juice?
2. What sane parents would buy something that turn their kids into a pile
of screaming nuts?
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube]
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About SpongeBob SquarePants
Parts of Australia are seeing the worst flooding in years. In Brisbane, a video crew paddles through a McDonalds outlet in a canoe. The song is “Fish Heads” {wiki} by Barnes and Barnes. -via the Presurfer
When the subject of frivolous lawsuits comes up, someone always mentions the McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit as an example, because the short version sounds so outrageous: a woman sued McDonalds because her coffee was served hot. But the short version doesn’t tell us much.
The world’s most infamous cup of coffee spilled on February 27, 1992 in Albuquerque, NM. Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old grandmother, was a passenger in her grandson’s car when they drove through at a McDonald’s, and after she received her styrofoam cup of joe her grandson pulled the car forward and parked so Liebeck could mix in her cream and sugar.
Liebeck braced the cup between her knees, but when she tried to pull off the cup’s lid, the entire cup of coffee spilled into her lap. Although subsequent developments in the courtroom turned Liebeck and her case into objects of derision, it’s worth noting that she actually suffered legitimate injuries from the accident. Liebeck’s sweatpants absorbed the hot coffee and held it next to her skin, which helped lead to third degree burns on six percent of her body. Liebeck ended up spending eight days in the hospital and undergoing skin grafts to counter the effects of the burns.
But that’s only the beginning of the story. Liebeck asked McDonalds for $20,000 to cover her medical expenses and lost wages. McDonalds offered $800. That’s when the story starts to get complicated. Read the entire account of how a jury decided to award Liebeck $2.9 million when the case went to court (and that’s not even the end) at mental_floss. Link
This image of mysterious origin is going around the ‘Tubes today. Which brilliant artist will step forward and claim responsibility?
via Geekologie
A lot of people probably think "McDonald’s made me fat," but there’s one guy in Brazil who got the court of law to agree with him. Here’s the bizarre story of a man who sued McD for making him fat … and won!
A former manager of a McDonald’s franchise in Porto Allegre, Brazil, sued the hamburger chain for making him gain 65 pounds while he worked with them for over a dozen years. McDonald’s must pay him $17,500 as recompense for his weight gain, a Brazilian court ruled on Tuesday.
The 32-year-old man, whose identity wasn’t disclosed, complained that the company’s policy of mandatory food sampling caused him to balloon from about 155 lbs. to 231 lbs. while working at their restaurant in southern Brazil. [...]
The man said that he felt forced to taste everything on the menu to ensure the quality of the food because McDonald’s hired undercover customers to randomly visit restaurants and report back on quality.
Also, he blamed the free lunches consisting of burgers, fries and ice cream, which contributed to his excessive weight gain during the course of employment.
Judge Joao Filho agreed with the man, and issued a ruling against the company, ordering them to pay $17500 to the ex-employee.
A McDonald’s restaurant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, has a sophisticated anti-theft device. It sprays robbers with a fine mist containing artificial DNA that can be seen under ultraviolet light:
The new system involved an employee-activated device that sprays a fine, barely visible mist laced with synthetic DNA to cover anyone in its path, including criminals, and simultaneously alerts the police to a crime in progress.
The mist — visible only under ultraviolet light — carries DNA markers particular to the location, enabling the police to match the burglar with the place burgled. Now, a sign on the front door of the McDonald’s prominently warns potential thieves of the spray’s presence: “You Steal, You’re Marked.”
Link via Ace of Spades HQ | Photo (unrelated) via Flickr user Leonid Mamchenkov used under Creative Commons license
Sally Davies took pictures of a McDonalds burger and fries for 137 days, and the pictures never changed. It wasn’t the first such experiment, but could it be replicated under normal conditions? Some say a Happy Meal will last forever, but YouTube member GitEmSteveDave had very different results. You can skip the first minute if you’re in a hurry. -via Breakfast Links
After a couple met, dated, and then hosted their wedding party at a McDonald’s location in Hong Kong, the company began offering wedding packages in that city:
The package has all the details to attract a wedding banquet cynic or a Golden Arches obsessive: a baked apple pie wedding cake, dress made out of party balloons, kiddie party favors for guests, and of course, catering by McDonald’s.
Alcohol is banned to make sure there won’t be drunk party guests acting inappropriately at the family venue, so newly weds will have to toast their union with soft drinks instead.
The cost will be a few thousand Hong Kong dollars, depending on what guests order on the spot. It’s unlikely that the couple will be able to book the entire restaurant for their wedding, but at that price, who cares if there are babies screaming in the booth next doors?
Link via Glenn Reynolds | Photo by Flickr user Ian Muttoo used under Creative Commons license
Stephen Von Worley created the above map of all McDonald’s locations in the 48 contiguous states. A spot in northwestern Nevada is the most McDonald’s-free on the map. It’s the McFarthest spot (to use Von Worley’s term) at 115 miles to the nearest McDonald’s restaurant. You can read about Von Worley’s discovery here, or about his subsequent pilgrimage to that location here. Von Worley brought McDonald’s food with him.
via Ace of Spades HQ
Previously about Stephen Von Worley:
Infographic on Burger Chain Dominance
Crayola’s Law
New York artist Sally Davies bought a plain hamburger Happy Meal from McDonalds. She didn’t eat it, but took pictures of it every day -for 137 days so far. The project will likely continue at least until the meal starts to look different. Link -via Cynical-C
Artist Angus MacLane made Corellian Cheeseburger — a Millennium Falcon-type vessel. Except that it’s a cheeseburger made out of LEGOs.
You can view more images at the link, including a R2 unit that appears to be modeled after the McDonald’s mascot The Grimace.
Link via Super Punch
What are these people in Moscow lined up for? Jobs? Cash? No, about 30,000 people lined up for the opportunity to eat at the first McDonalds to open in the city, in 1990. -via Buzzfeed
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of The Food Lab (over at Serious Eats) likes a challenge, so he decided to reverse engineer what is considered to be world's most perfect fries: McDonald's french fries.
Now, you may disagree that the words "McDonald's" and "good" belong in the same sentence, let alone "perfect" - but there's something in their french fries that makes Americans go nuts. I personally don't get it - perhaps because I didn't grow up eating McDonald's fries, but my wife swears by 'em. And she's not alone: over 2 million pounds of McDonald's fries are consumed every single day. That makes Mickey D the largest potato buyer in the United States.
Back to Kenji's quest. So how hard is it to reverse engineer McDonald's french fries? Turns out, it was very, very hard, so Kenji decided to do the next logical thing: he's going to steal McDonald's recipe.
Anyone with a buck can get a batch of fully cooked McDonald's fries, but I was after something more. I wanted to get fries from the store in their fully frozen state so that I could examine their surface for clues on how they were parcooked, as well as attempt to fry them myself at home to discover if there is any secret in the fry oil in the shops.
I figured I'd be just be able to walk into the store and order them straight from the cashier.
"Welcome to McDonald's, may I take your order?"
"Yes Ma'am. I'd like a large fries please, hold the cooking."
"Excuse me?"
I know she's already said no in her head, but I press on just the same: "Um... I'd just like the frozen fries please."
"I'm sorry sir, we just don't do that."
Time for some intimidation tactics: "Ok. Could I speak to the manager please?"
"I am the manager."
Sh*t. I bring out the really big guns: "Listen, the thing is, my wife is pregnant—like really pregnant—and she sent me on a quest for McDonald's french fries. But she only likes them really fresh, like straight out of the fryer fresh, so I figured I'd just get some frozen, and fry them for her at home. You know how it is. Women—no accounting for'em, right?"
She remains unimpressed, and needless to say, I go home fry-less, contemplating whether attempting to leverage an unborn, un-conceived son in exchange for a couple dozen frozen potato sticks is grounds for eternal damnation.
Thank goodness that Kenji didn't give up easily. One of his Facebook fans managed to come up with the perfect ruse. Head on over to Serious Eats to find out exactly what happened and how you can make your very own McDonald's fries in the comfort of your own kitchen: Link
On April 15, 1955, Ray Kroc opened his own McDonald’s franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois (seen below). While tons of people head to this so-called “first McDonald’s” every year, the fact is, the building standing there is not only not the first McDonald’s (Kroc actually opened the ninth location of the franchise), it’s not even the original building, but just a reconstruction. Even so, that spot of ground did have a huge impact on American life as we know it and spawned what was at one point the largest restaurant chain in the world –the title is now held by Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, etc.) and followed by Subway.
Image via ChicagoGeek [Flickr]
When I was a kid, I always thought whoever Mr. McDonald was, he must be super rich. As it turns out, Richard and Maurice McDonald, who started the original restaurant, only made $2.7 million on the deal. While that does seem like a good amount of cash, just think how much the restaurant is worth these days. To make matters worse, the brothers insisted on retaining the rights to their first restaurant in San Bernardino, so Ray opened a McDonald’s restaurant right by theirs and ran them out of business. Worse still, even though the original deal involved the brothers earning 0.5% of the chain’s annual revenues, Kroc refused to honor that part of the verbal agreement after the McDonald’s brothers refused to sell him their original restaurant and the land it stood on.
And it’s not like the McDonald’s Brothers didn’t do anything but open an everyday burger joint; if they did, Ray probably wouldn’t have been so interested in taking the whole thing over. They innovated many of the ideas that have made modern fast food restaurants so successful, including assembly line kitchens, simplistic menus and self-serve counters. The menus had nothing on them but hamburgers, cheeseburgers, French fries, potato chips, sodas, milkshakes and apple pies. Because things were so quick and efficient, prices were about half of what it cost to get a similar meal at a diner.
Image via _skynet [Flickr]
It wasn’t too long after Kroc took over completely that the chain expanded out of America, first to Canada, then Costa Rica, Panama, Japan, Europe and Australia. These days, there’s McDonald’s located all over the world. In fact, the image above shows just how widely spread they are in the U.S.
While this world-wide globalization has led to many negative views of the corporation, some people say the company has actually helped improve the standard of service in some areas of the world. For example, when McDonald’s opened in Hong Kong in 1975, it was the first restaurant to consistently offer clean public restrooms. Soon afterwards, customers began to demand the same from other restaurants in the area.
Whether McDonald’s has a positive or negative impact in the country it enters may be a matter of opinion, but one thing the restaurant takes great pride in is their localization of the menu based on the native tastes of the area. Some interesting menu items from around the world include:
Images via Weather Sealed, xetark [Flickr], Allan Reyes [Flickr],
Even in America, certain locations have their own specialty treats. The McLobster and McCrab are served seasonally throughout New England. And in the late 1990’s, Chicago locations offered a hamburger with barbecue sauce and Canadian bacon that was dubbed “the Beef Wennington” after a notable Chicago Bulls player.
Many of the company’s biggest successes were actually created locally by franchisees, including the Filet-O-Fish, the Big Mac and the Egg McMuffin. The Filet-O-Fish was made by a Cincinnati franchise owner who wanted to offer his Catholic customers a meal they could still eat on Fridays and during lent. Ray Kroc tried a similar idea at his original restaurant, but his Hula Burger, a sandwich a pineapple slice in place of meat was a huge flop.
As for the Big Mac, it was created by an early Pittsburgh franchiser who wanted to serve something adults would enjoy when feeding their kiddos at the restaurant. The corporate heads told him he could only create new menu items creating ingredients on the existing menu, which is where the Big Mac was born.
The Egg McMuffin was in a similar position as the Big Mac inventor, only he went ahead and added a new creation to the menu without contacting headquarters. The corporation was quite upset that he started selling the McMuffin without their blessing, but they quickly changed their minds when they saw how popular it was.
Image Via VirtualErn [Flickr]
It’s not only the menu that headquarters like to keep consistent. Locations are largely required to look similar to one another on the inside. That’s not to say there aren’t a few stand out locations though. The “Solid Gold McDonald’s” by the Rock and Roll of Fame is themed after fifties rock and roll. Victoria, British Columbia has a restaurant with a 24-carat gold chandelier and other fancy light fixtures (seen above). The McDonald’s in Stratford-upon-Avon has a very subtle design, as all buildings in the area are required to conform to the historic look of Shakespeare’s birthplace.
Whether you love McDonald’s or loathe it, there’s no arguing that the restaurant has had a huge impact on our society. Heck, Fast Food Nation has estimated that one of eight workers in America have been employed at the restaurant at some point of their lives. So you guys have any weird McDonald’s in your area? Maybe one with unique menu items or a strange design.
Image Via buschap [Flickr]
Sources Mental Floss #1, #2, Food Network Humor, Wikipedia #1, #2, #3
