McDonald’s Options Gone Wrong

 

As technology moves forward, the fast food experience is evolving. In the future I'm pretty sure we'll have restaurants operating with no human intervention, and using fancy algorithms they'll be able to predict what you're going to order. For now we still have people working the front counters and behind in the kitchens (I'm thankful for that), but we are starting to see some interesting automation. McDonalds is probably one of the places leading the way right now with their automatic order stations. While other fast food places do offer these order stations, I find that many McDonalds locations are starting to make it hard to order any other way. 

The thing that makes these kiosks interesting to me is the ability to custom order your meal, without having to face the disappointed gaze of a human being. The kiosks will not judge me if I order so many extra pickles that it seems like an unhealthy addiction. The thing I'm finding about these modifications available at the McDonald's kiosks is they seem to differ from country to country, and sometimes even restaurant to restaurant. Because of this, and because of my unhealthy addition to pickles, I always check what my options are every time I place my order. As it turns out, in Qatar at least, they have some really strange options to choose from.

On this particular day, Allison and I ordered our regular choices. I got a Big Mac.

Allison got the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. While there were a few options that seemed pretty standard, we also noticed a few that seemed a little bit odd, or at the very least new to us. I was super happy that extra pickles was an option.

We'll start with Allison's Quarter Pounder. While there are a few regular items she added on, like the extra pickles (although extra pickles are not available everywhere). Two of the addons were pretty interesting. In particular the mayonnaise and shredded lettuce. In fact both of these options were available for every burger (as you'll see later). The really fascinating thing here was the fact that Allison could not only add lettuce to her Quarter Pounder, but she could add a double serving of lettuce.

I'm not sure if this photo does it justice, but Allison actually got a small salad wedged into her Quarter Pounder. They did not skimp on the lettuce at all. It's a strange addition available, and one that they really delivered on, but I don't think it's the strangest.

I too went for the extra lettuce and extra pickles (I'm only human after all). I was not offered the choice of adding two extra helpings of lettuce, I assume that's because the Big Mac already comes with lettuce and two extra servings would just be silly. The very peculiar option is the one word found under the shredded lettuce on my order, "cut". When I ordered my burger, under the options it only said "cut", with no explanation at all. I simply couldn't pass up this opportunity so...

I too received a ridiculously large amount of lettuce. My container was pretty much filled to the top and overflowing. But as you can see, my burger was in fact cut in half, right down the middle. It's not that I find cutting your burger in half to be problematic. Maybe you have kids that are going to share one burger, or maybe (as is the case) you find it less messy to eat one half of a burger at a time (particularly if you have a ridiculous amount of lettuce and pickles). The part I found odd is that there was no explanation as to what "cut" meant on the options, and they never asked how I wanted it cut. While I didn't mind it being simply cut in half, I would have preferred a pizza style of cutting into four or maybe even six wedges.

When I picked up my order, I did hear some conversation (in a foreign language) and some giggles. I'm not certain that this order is very common, or if they knew we were being a little silly, so they added a ridiculous amount of lettuce. Lucky for them ridiculous is one of our favourite ways to have our burgers.

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Junk Fud on the Road in Qatar

This is the second part of our journey to the Middle East. In the first episode we visited Oman, this time we went to Qatar, although the focus is really on Doha,

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Eating in Qatar

I think Qatar has a really interesting food scene. Since it was part two of our trip in the Middle East, it's hard not to compare our time in Qatar to our time in Oman. While these two places have a lot in common, there seems to be some differences as well. If I was to describe the main difference I saw I would say it's about traditionalism. Don't get me wrong, both of these countries are steeped in their traditional culture, but my experience in Qatar was that of a place looking at outside influences a bit more, where Oman is looking more at its traditional roots.

I say all of this with some strong biases. First of all we never left Doha when we went to Qatar, where in Oman we traveled around a lot. Qatar was also just on the end of their World Cup show, and it felt like the city went through a very large transformation to prepare for it. I would say that Doha appears to be a little more modern and bigger than Muscat, we did plan our travel with that thought in mind. This is all to say that during our time in Doha we ate a lot of western food.

We did this because we no longer live in a western country, and when presented with western food it's a treat. I've mentioned this a thousand times on this blog before, but whenever we live overseas (as we are now) we often like to plan some time when we travel to enjoy western treats when we can. Doha offered us more than we expected, and we took advantage as much as we could.

Our hotel even offered us western fair every single morning. They had a waffle maker and an attendant at the waffle iron that couldn't get them out fast enough. It wasn't just me though, I would say that most of the guests at our hotel went for a waffle every single morning. The line actually got so long that I had a few breakfasts without.

The one thing however that we could not do without each and every day was cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. 

Allison and I are huge fans of this place, and especially their cheesecake.

It really serves us well as they even have a cheesecake that Allison can enjoy.

They also have many different cheesecakes that I can enjoy.

Which is great.

I probably could have written an entire blog about each and every night at the Cheesecake Factory, and our amazing server Chris, who got to know us and knew what we wanted to order each and every night.

At this point I'm just putting filler text between the many pictures of the different cheesecakes that we sampled.

We didn't eat every single meal at Cheesecake Factory, in fact we only ate one (we just always ate dessert at Cheesecake Factory). We also enjoyed meals at Shake Shack, TGI Fridays (which we had an issue with considering the Muslim weekly calendar is different than the western one), and even a few stops at McDonalds (I'll have more on that in a future post).

All was not dedicated to fast food either, we managed to try a few fancier restaurants as well. One such meal we were treated to an amazing view of the city on top of the torch that was built to celebrate the World Cup. The view was amazing and the food was very classy indeed.

Probably our most interesting meal was when we decided to wander to the Katara Cultural Village. We didn't know what to expect at this place but we knew we wanted to get lunch. What we discovered was a love for Armenian food at a restaurant called Mamig. To keep on brand with this blog, we got a couple of desserts that were both beautiful and tasty.

One was a wonderfully creamy pistachio dish the other was cakes filled with silky cream. I cannot tell you how great every part of this meal was, and how much I'm now a fan of Armenian food.

I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that most of our meals on the Qatar leg of our trip weren't from other parts of the world. Maybe much like my home town of Toronto in Canada, part of Doha's culture is other cultures. This part of the world has been a hub of trade for thousands of years, and so there's a certain openess to other cultures, and cultural foods. While we focused on western food while we were there, that's only because we wanted to. There were so many other great places to eat, and fun foods to enjoy. From Fancy treats to simple pleasures, Qatar has some amazing food range.

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Airport and Airplane Food To Oman, Qatar and Back

How do I put this, the food I ate while traveling to and from the Middle East was both very interesting and not at the same time. To be clear, we flew business class. While it seems like we've been doing this a lot lately, it has more to do with the current situation with airlines than it does with us being particularly fancy. First of all we found a really good deal with these business class flights, like really good. Secondly we had one overnight flight and several long waits in airports. This means we would get comfortable sleeping arrangements on the flight and lounge access in the airports. So it almost became worth the small amount extra to get business class... well sort of.

Our first flight was actually not business class, that's because the flight we took was a pretty short haul (prop plane), and they didn't even offer business class. This was also the most "interesting" meal we ate the entire journey. The photo does not give it justice because it just looks like a nice plate of butter chicken. The problem is that it was cold. When I say it was cold I don't mean it was heated up and then it didn't stay warm once it was delivered to me. This butter chicken was delivered to me as if it was a salad. Is this a thing?

Once we landed in Thailand (our first stop) we headed straight to the lounge... no we didn't. We headed straight to McDonalds. We went to McDonalds because the current place we live does not have a McDonalds. We seem to have a gift for living in countries that do not have the Golden Arches. Some might consider that a blessing, but I find that when I live in a place that doesn't have a McDonalds, I crave McDonalds all the time. So the first thing we did when we landed in an airport with a McDonalds is stop and get burgers.

We did eventually get to the lounge as we had a long layover and I picked up these absolutely beautiful desserts. The rose shaped tart was a mango tart and it was amazing. The cup dessert was the most fancy apple crumble I've ever seen in my life. It had blueberries and gold leaf added, which are both equally weird additions to apple crumble for completely different reasons. I'm starting to believe that apple desserts are considered fancy in South East Asia, even the ones we consider in North America to be very simple.

Somehow, after our first layover all we ate on the rest of our flights was breakfast. I think it had something to do with the long flights and how we were crossing over time zones. I'll be honest it was all a bit of a blur. We got onto our second flight of this adventure and prepared to sleep, which I didn't because I can't sleep on planes. I will however say, in good Candy Critic style, all of the breakfasts I selected were pretty much just desserts. It started with what I thought would be a couple of slices of banana bread (my favourite of all breads). I thought it would be a nice little snack to wake up to, instead it was probably the most over the top banana bread I've ever seen in my life.

It also came with a puck of butter. When I say puck, I mean the most perfectly round slab of butter ever created. I believe mathematicians could use this puck to calibrate their instruments.

I have a curiosity when it comes to sweets, so before getting off this flight I saw on the menu that as a snack they offered chocolate. There was no description of what kind of chocolate and how it would be delivered. At some point in the middle of the night the flight attendant saw that I was awake and asked if I wanted anything. Bleary eyed and confused I remembered that I saw the words chocolate on the menu, so I said "chocolate". She brought me back these, and they were pretty good. I mention this because it will come up again in the future. I also should mention that even though I wasn't hungry I ate both of these chocolates and while they tasted good, I don't think it was doing much for my health.

The third and final flight of this leg I decided to order waffles... and they gave me pancakes. I'm not sure where this breakdown happened, but everyone on the flight who ordered this got the same thing. I think it might be a language barrier or a simple mistake on the menu. As always my carbs came with a side of carbs and plenty of syrup and jam. Needless to say I was not feeling great after this.

We finally arrived in Muscat Oman, and had a wonderful time (I'll be posting about that later). After that portion of our trip it was time to head to Doha Qatar. This was a fairly short flight, but there were two things worth mentioning food wise about this leg. First of all I tried something in the lounge at the airport that I never thought about before, pineapple and mint juice. Adding mint to juice is a big thing in Oman, and I drank plenty of iced tea with mint throughout our trip, but pineapple juice? It strangely worked, really well. I would actually recommend giving it a try, but don't be stingy with the mint.

The flight offered a nice fancy meal, but the dessert (that round puck in the upper left hand) was amazing. It was some kind of custard treat that I could have eaten for the rest of my life. We arrived in Doha and also had a wonderful time (and once again I'll have more about that in its own post). 

After our great stop in Qatar we headed home (two flights). We left Doha at 1 am, so we decided to get to the airport around 9 and have a late dinner. Frankly the dinner in the lounge was okay, but kind of complicated. It was most complicated when the wifi didn't work for us at the airport and it turns out that if you want to see the menu of items at the lounge you "have" to scan a QR code. Fortunately they had a buffet with a few less items but it suited us well enough. While the food was fine, they had a few special items for the Chinese New Year including this beautiful and tasty orange dessert. I asked the person manning the dessert table which was the best, he said the chocolate cake was the most popular, but these orange desserts where a special for the New Year. I decided to go special over popular and I was not disappointed.

Our first flight home was another overnight flight that offered some kind of dinner at 1 am and then breakfast... again. I skipped dinner as we had just eaten in the airport, but opted to have breakfast. I thought I should get something sensible until I saw that they had a Nutella donut available. The thing about this donut is the menu said it was a "freshly made donut". I immediately assumed that they had a deep fryer on the plane and would be making them piping hot. I also assumed it wouldn't be gigantic. I was wrong on both accounts. While it looks very fancy, it was pretty average and cold in the middle.

I should also mention, on our flight back home that I ordered the mystery chocolate again, and once again it had no description. I had fond memories of the other chocolate I got on the earlier flight and I thought I would maybe get it again. I also should mention that I wanted some popcorn thinking it would be made fresh for some reason. This time however they gave me a Dairymilk bar instead of their fancy chocolates. I'd like to believe it's because they ran out of their fancy chocolates, but it also could have been how dirty and tired I looked on this last leg of our trip and the flight attendant just thought I wasn't fancy enough. The popcorn was also in bags and not fresh, but I did get both salted and caramel corn.

Our last leg we ate something that I don't really remember and I didn't get a picture. I was way too tired and just looking forward to going into my own bed. All in all the food we got while traveling on this journey was very fancy and tasty. We also got a pair of pyjamas to take home which is both weird but also amazing.

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Middle East Treats All Week!

I just got back from a fun adventure in the Middle East (Oman and Qatar to be exact). While there I ate a lot of great food, and found lots of candy to review. I thought I'd start off with a full week of special Middle Eastern treats in a fun review-a-thon. That means you'll find a new review every single day this week (assuming I don't sleep in) when you wake up in the morning. For this first review-a-thon I found a group of these candies that were actually somewhat similar, but also different.

Check out the current instalment in my Middle East candy review-a-thon right here, and check back (on candycritic.org or on my social media) every day for new reviews.

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