What I Order - Part 2

Whenever I go to fast food restaurants I’m often presented a difficult choice. Do I order the new or special food items that’s available or do I go with the food item I know and love.  I got to thinking about this, and it made me wonder what is my go to order at most fast food restaurants. Obviously I have different choices depending on the restaurant, but I think each and every restaurant has a go to item for me. I’m not saying it’s the best item or the most popular. I’m just saying that this is the flavour I associate with this restaurant, and maybe you might have something else.

So here’s part two of my choices. Keep in mind that I haven’t included a few fairly popular restaurants, and that’s mostly because I’ve either never eaten there, or at the very least haven’t eaten there in the last 3 years. There also might be a few restaurants that you don’t know about, it could be because I’ve been living in Asia for the last few years so there are a few that are only common in this part of the world. I’ve only done fast food restaurants, which I describe as places were you either commonly get takeout (pizza mostly) or places that require a tray.

Lotteria

Lotteria is a brand that I first tried in Japan, so I assume it’s Japanese, but I could be wrong. I’ve had really mixed results when it comes to Lotteria, particularly since recently I’ve only ordered it in places (outside of Japan) that have regular beef shortages. The biggest problem I’ve found as of late is a lack of availability of many products, most notably anything with beef. So my go to at Lotteria is often their chicken sandwich, but only because it’s often the only thing available.

McDonald’s

This is a tough one since I’ve been eating at McDonald’s my entire life. When I was a kid the cheeseburger was my go to, but as soon as I was able I transferred to the Big Mac. I would say that the Big Mac remains my go to, however I occasionally will get into the Filet-O-Fish for a while. I know that it’s one of the least popular sandwich at McDonald’s, but I just love it. I also can’t eat anything at McDonald’s without getting their french fries.

MOS Burger

MOS Burger is another Japanese (I assume) chain that seems to be spreading into other parts of the world. This is also one of the most unique items on this list as I don’t really go for their regular burgers very often. My one go to item is the yakiniku rice burger. The highlight of this burger is the fact that the bun is actually made up of compressed sticky rice (and not bread). The beef filling works really well with the rice as well, it’s like eating a nice teriyaki meal in one sandwich. The one fault of this burger is that it almost always comes insanely hot (temperature wise) and so I have to wait a few minutes before taking my first bite.

Pizza Company

If you ever want to read an interesting story about the founding of a company, check out Pizza Company. When I’m in (or living in) South East Asia, it’s my pizza of choice. My go to pizza here is also unique as I’ll almost always go for whatever gimmick pizza they’re offering, and they offer some amazing choices. Some of note are the cheese volcano pizza (with a mini cheese volcano on each slice) and the cheeseburger pizza (with mini cheeseburgers baked into the crust). The gimmicks don’t always work, but they’re always fun to try.

Pizza Hut

Since this list is specific about what I love about this chain for take-away, and not eating in restaurant, I have to say that their deluxe (pepperoni, green pepper and mushrooms) is my go to pizza. I will often also include extra cheese as well. I also almost always go with the deep dish pizza as they seem to do it best when it comes to chain restaurants.

What is a Big Mac?

There’s a global trend that’s changing the landscape of fast food, and it’s chicken. Sure chicken’s been a part of fast food for ages, probably for as long as fast food has existed. However, when most people think of fast food, they think of hamburgers or pizza. This is changing though, and more and more fast food restaurants are becoming chicken experts. There are many competing theories about why this is happening. Some people suggest that global food prices are making beef too expensive, others suggest that it’s a choice people are making for health, some even suggest that it’s just a trend that people prefer eating.

What that’s lead to is many fast food chains adding more chicken to their menu, and McDonald’s is no exception. They’ve not only added many new chicken options to their menu, they’ve started to offer chicken variations of their classic burgers. One such item is the Chicken Mac. I decided to give one of these a try and it really made me think about how one defines “what is a Big Mac”.

The problem I ran into is that McDonald’s made more than one change to this classic sandwich. The most obvious change is that they went with two deep fried chicken patties instead of the beef. However, the other change they made is that the Big Mac sauce was changed to just regular mayonnaise. The rest of the sandwich was pretty much the same, lettuce, cheese, re-hydrated onion, pickles and the three layer bun. I didn’t actually research any of this before getting the Chicken Mac, and was kind of shocked by the lack of the Big Mac sauce.

It made me wonder, is it still a Big Mac (or any kind of “Mac” sandwich at all)? I suggested to Allison that I don’t think that this could be considered in the same family of sandwiches, and she argued that it could because it still had that unique bun and the same toppings. She also suggested that the rest of the burger still seemed Mac like. I’m not sure if I agree, but this is actually something that comes up a lot in fast food and candy.

When a candy company makes a different variation of a candy bar, can it still be in the same family. A great example is if we compare the Kit Kat bar with the Kit Kat Chunky (or Big as some call it). While a Kit Kat Chunky kind of looks like a finger of a Kit Kat bar, it’s really only one finger. The ratio of chocolate to wafers is different, and the size of the wafers is different as well. When you think about it, most chocolate bars are really just one finger as well. So does that mean a Kit Kat chunky really isn’t a Kit Kat bar? How far can you stray and how many ingredients can you change while still keeping a snack or junk food item in the same family?

Are all fast food sandwiches that have Big Mac sauce on them, a Big Mac? Can you put Big Mac sauce on a Quarter Pounder and call it a Quarter Pounder Mac? Or do you need that unique bun too? In the last 10 or 20 years it’s become really popular to make variations on popular snack and fast food items, but how far is too far? I argue that the Chicken Mac is not a Big Mac anymore.

McHolidays?

 I'm always amazed that McDonald's used to have so many commercials around the holidays, yet they never (as far as I know) have offered a holiday themed food item. I want to eat a McTurkey burger!

The Great Question, Pie VS Sundae

 I do realize that I didn't mention McFlurries, but I'm kind of old school like that.

CC

The Classiest Treat At McDonalds?

On a recent trip to Dubai I stopped in a McDonalds and noticed something interesting in their McCafe selection of desserts, macarons. I should make it clear, I'm not sure that this is the only place where McDonalds sells macarons, leave a comment if they sell them where you live. The thing about the McCafe dessert case is that it's strangely a place I rarely ever explore. In this particular case (no pun intended), the McCafe is attached to the front counter and sits right next to the place where you have to wait for your food. Many of the McCafe cases I've seen in the past are either near the cash registers (I use the touch screens to order my food) or the cafe is in another section of the restaurant entirely.

You might also imagine that any desserts are in my wheelhouse, but strangely that's not always true. When I'm at McDonalds I tend to focus on the classic desserts, the sundaes and pies, and I often ignore the fancy McCafe stuff. It's only been recently that I've even tasted their donuts, and that's only because we won a few in the Monopoly contest they had. So while waiting for my food, I happened to notice that the McCafe sold macarons, and I wondered how a fast food chain could handle such a sophisticated dessert.

I didn't buy any on the first visit, I instead decided to just gawk at them and wonder if anyone ever bought them. On the next visit my curiosity peaked, and I decided to give them a shot. Fortunately I could still order them from the touch screen kiosks, and I could even pick which flavour I wanted. The choices were very simple, which kind of surprised me. I guess they decided that they didn't want to be too outlandish with the choices. I still think making a macaron with a light brown cookie and a dark brown filling would have been fun, because it would look like a hamburger. 

The flavours were pretty basic, and I went with chocolate, raspberry, and vanilla. The box was the first thing I noticed when I got my cookies. I was kind of wondering if these macaron were regularly available items at McDonalds, and the fact that they have a box specifically designed for the macarons tells me they are. It also tells me that they realise that these are a little fancier than their other desserts as every time I've had a donut at McDonads it just comes in a paper bag. Strangely I feel like the macarons would have survived better in a paper bag than the donuts I picked up.

I decided to start with the vanilla, as it's really the basic flavour that's the most challenging to get right. Vanilla treats can go be amazing if done right, but if not they're just kind of boring. My first impressions weren't that great. First of all they were cold, and I don't mean not warm, they were actually very cold. The vanilla flavour was fine, but nothing that impressive. Finally the centre was a cream, not a jam or even something similar to an icing, it was like a small dollop of whipped cream. The chocolate and raspberry were fairly similar in that they were cold, fairly flavourless, and the cream in the middle was kind of disappointing.

This leads me back to my original idea, is this the fanciest thing ever at McDonalds, and if it is, is it worth it. To the first part of this idea, I do believe that this is one, if not the fanciest thing I've ever had at McDonalds, but as to the second thing, I'd probably say no, it's not worth it. They're not overly expensive, but they're not cheap either (over 1 dollar each US). Personally I still have yet to warm up to the McCafe. I don't drink coffee and so far the desserts have been a little disappointing. If there's something I'm missing, let me know. 

I really thought that the McCafe idea wouldn't have stayed as long as it has. I understand that the coffee at McDonalds is spectacular according to many people, but it was apparently spectacular long before the McCafe opened. Is this cafe gaining its success off of a product they sold before they even opened? So far the donuts where meh, and the macrons were pretty low quality too. I didn't hate either one, but I have no reason to get them again when I could have a caramel sundae instead.

CC

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.

CC

Bangkok Snacking

 We recently got back from a quick trip to Thailand, and boy are my arms tired. That's a really lame joke, and not very relatable to my trip. It would be more appropriate to say that our stomachs are totally stuffed instead of our arms being tired because we filled up on all kinds of great food. What you have to know about this trip before you continue reading is two things. First of all we have been to Bangkok many times, we've lived in South East Asia for several years in the past, and we're living there now. The second thing you should know is something I just said, we live in South East Asia right now. What that means is we're not really going crazy over the South East Asianess of this adventure. We can get street food, great hot pot and all kinds of rice and noodle dishes where we live. In some ways we go to a big city like Bangkok to get a little big city life as well as western food. So don't complain that we did South East Asia poorly on this adventure because we pretty much live it every single day.

As I said, this is a quick journal highlighting some of the things we ate on this adventure. I feel like this is an interesting representation of Thai eating from the perspective of people who lives in South East Asia, and haven't seen a McDonalds in months.

Needless to say, the first thing we ate when we got into the airport was McDonalds. It was nothing special, just a way to get that craving out of the way and eat something quickly before the long cab ride to our hotel. Those of you who have visited Bangkok before know that you need to be prepared for a long cab ride from the airport and fueling up (along with a bathroom break) is essential.

The next morning... McDonalds again (this will be a reoccurring theme). We had a busy day planned and we just wanted to get breakfast quick and we all know that McDonalds breakfast is a travelers dream. The cool thing about this particular breakfast at McDonalds is that I managed to sample one of the Thailand McDonalds exclusives the McPatongko. It's basically a crispy deep fried donut that comes with a condensed milk dipping sauce. Happy that I tried it, but didn't feel the need to get them again.

When we visit Thailand, there are certain places we always like to get food. We'll often go back again and again until we're kind of sick of it, or at the very least until we no longer feel like we'll regret not going one more time. Something you learn traveling in certain parts of the world is that some foods are more dangerous than others when it come to food born illness. Most seasoned travelers will tell you that meat it not the true danger, ice cubes and lettuce are the silent killers. Because we live in South East Asia, in a place that could be a danger for food born illness, we don't often get to enjoy a good salad. The great news is that we know a place in Thailand that not only offers a clean safe salad, but the salads they make are excellent. This place is known as Jones's Salad, and I feel like we ate there at least 3 times on this adventure, and we certain stopped there on our first day.

For those of you looking for something a little more South East Asian, this is your time to shine. Another one of my always first day must have foods is mango sticky rice, bought off of the street. I have two vendors that I always frequent, and they've never disappointed. Mango sticky rice will always be the first and last dessert I get on any trip to Bangkok. Sometimes I'll get one or two in between as well, I believe I've even had a trip where I got a serving of this amazing dessert each and every day of my stay. As a person who loves sweets, I can easily tell you that a well made mango sticky rice is the best dessert on offer in the entirety of Thailand, maybe even in all of South East Asia.

Our next stop in Bangkok makes the least sense of them all, Tim Horton's. Sure we lived in Canada just a few months ago, but for some reason I just can't stop in a city with a Tim Horton's without seeing what they have on offer. For those of you that don't know, Tim Horton's has had great success with locations all over Asia. I love the idea of seeing how these international locations differ and how they're the same as the classic Canadian shops. I'd like to tell you all about that right here, but you'll have to wait a little while as I'm currently writing a blog dedicated to my experience eating Timbits in Thailand.

For one of our lunches we decided to get some Japanese tonkatsu. It was a fine meal, however the interesting part of it was the decorations. The entire restaurant was filled with fun tonkatsu characters all dressed up for Christmas. I found the fact that little pigs were celebrating the holiday season right next to breaded pork cutlets to be a little weird, but that's mostly because I was raised to disassociate my food from the animal. In most Asian cities it's celebrated.

The one thing Allison can't resist when we go to Thailand is Sao Ping. Once again, all of you out there who think that we overdo western food in Thailand, you'll enjoy this. Sao Ping is a fried bean based cake that's a very common street food. They have various fillings and can even have differing ingredients in the cake, but they all have a similar texture and always taste great warm. I've seen them for sale in a few bakeries and grocery stores, but I always feel like the street version is the best. This is probably because of their very short shelf life. While they taste fine a little old, they're so much better fresh off of the heat.

One thing that seems to be constantly growing in all parts of Asia is ice tea. Milk tea, boba tea, and fruit teas run rampant at every corner. There are combinations of these teas, speciality version and over the top dessert ice teas available everywhere. I decided to jump into this trend head first and tried something called a Dirty Nutella Milk Tea. It consisted of a chocolate milk tea, chocolate sauce, many generous scoops of Nutella at the bottom, and oddly marshmallow used like boba balls. The marshmallows were the strangest part, but kind of fun to hunt down throughout the drink. Getting the occasional mouth full of Nutella was fun, but also pretty heavy. While I did enjoy this sweet treat, it left me more thirsty than when I started.

For our last meal we decided to sit down to some shabu shabu. The great thing about shabu shabu is it allows everyone to get a lot of whatever they want. We of coarse stuffed ourselves silly, but I didn't pass up the free scoop of ice cream for dessert.

Given the fact that I just stuffed my face with a great deal of meat a vegetables, I thought I'd give the charcoal ice cream a taste. It made sense since charcoal is known to help with an upset stomach, and it's ice cream, so it'll make it fun too. It actually tasted pretty good, but I can't say it did much to settle my stomach considering the amount we ate.

My final treat, you guessed it, McDonalds. This time I blame the fact that I had 45 minutes between the time we checked out of the hotel to the time we needed to get picked up for our cab ride back to the airport. I did however manage to get another Thailand signature dessert. It's the pineapple pie a la mode. There are so many great things about this dessert that make me wonder why all McDonalds can't have this. First of all the pie is deep fried, unless the filling of a McDonalds pie is ultra unique, I really only go for the deep fried pies. Secondly the pineapple is a fun filling, maybe not something I'd always order, but once in a while it's supper tasty. Finally, putting it in ice cream is a brilliant move. I'm sure if they don't actually offer this at your local McDonalds you could probably just get a sundae and put your pie in it, but I'm kind of lazy, so I've never done that before.

Seeing as we're back in Asia for a few years, I seriously doubt this will be my last stop in Bangkok. I might write another recap, but frankly most of my trips to Bangkok look a lot like this one. 

CC

Tom's Look At The Visual Side Of Snacks And Candy - Bag From McDonald's Canadian Edition

Hello, again. If you are a Candy Critic follower in Canada, you may have seen the food package in the photo below:

Recently, McDonald’s introduced a version of a food item that’s uniquely identified with Canada and especially the French-Canadian population. I’m not here to talk about the food itself but to comment on the package.

In design terms, lettering is known as a “font” which refers to the style of the type as well as it’s size and degree of ‘boldness’. In the above photo, the container is a neutral grey/brown with strong black letters. The word “Poutine” doesn’t carry across the surface in one piece. Typically, when a word is ‘broken’ it is done so after a syllable. If you sound out where the syllable break would occur, it’s pretty obvious why the word is broken the way it is. Even with the popularity of the “poop” emoji in relation to some food items (muffin and candy moulds for example) it seems McDonald’s opted not to have a word fragment that sounds like “poo” on it’s exciting new food option.

The second photo reveals another reason for the unusual word break in “poutine”. It seems the current design model calls for non-traditional word breaks in favour of a bold visual. The plain, brown bag gets a splash of red from the large, bold letters. What’s remarkable is that the designers were allowed to push a well-known trademark to the brink of being illegible. A company’s trademark is a big deal. It takes time to build a solid identity and once established, it is guarded diligently. It says a lot about the strength and recognition factor that the logo was played with to such a degree.

At a glance, it looks like three words are shown. Once again, the word does not break on the syllables, as is typical in text handling design. “McD” is a strong identifier and may even evoke the familiar nickname “Mickey-D’s”. The second two letters are greatly enlarged and seem to form the word “on”. The third line has the letters “ald’s” and is the strangest element when taken on it’s own. Fortunately, the three lines of word fragments are packed in a tight design block that allows the viewer to take in the elements as one. With the trademark red colour used in tandem with the commonly used font associated with McDonald’s, the true identity is easy to puzzle out.

Next time you sit down to enjoy your order of McDonald’s, you may find you look at it with new eyes.

Tom

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Sampling McDonald’s Carbonara Fries In Japan.

Managed to get my hands on the legendary McDonald’s Carbonara fries today, and I made a little video of me preparing them. They actually weren’t that bad, they’re actually good enough that I’d get them again. I’d also be interested in more “strange” sauces for my fries at McDonald’s.

Click here to check out the video of me dumping a gross looking sauce on McDonald’s fries.

CC

It's A Very Special Episode Of Chris, Why Would You Eat That?!!

This is not only a double episode (two snacks), but both parts were filmed on the road (Singapore and Thailand). In this episode we try two very unique McDonald's pies, both on the savory side. Savory McDonald's pies are rare in North America, but all around the world they have some pretty unique savory pies, and some of them are actually pretty good.

Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to find out what we're eating next.

Also make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with everything we put out.

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My Candy/Junk Food Chrsitmas Wishlist - Big Mac Sauce

I'll tell you why I'm obsessed with the idea of a bottle of Big Mac sauce. It's not because I want to make Big Macs at home, it's because I want to see if the sauce works in other experimental cooking ideas.

CC

Candy In the Media

When you think of a McDonald's smoothy, this is likely not what you imagine.

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Candy In The Media

Warning, if songs get easily stuck in your head, do not watch this video.  Worst of all, if food jingles make you hungry, and songs get easily stuck in your head, really don't watch this video.  I'm going to go eat a Kit Kat and a box of Rice-A-Roni.

CC

Cypriot Snacks

I love traveling... wait a minute, I don't love traveling all the time, I actually hate "traveling" particularly when it's airplane travel.  But I love to go to new places, and I particularly love trying new snacks.  It's just that whole airport, airplane, and even the taxi ride to the airport really is no fun at all.  I do however try and make the best of it, and before any trip I like to check out all of the crazy, and overpriced treats available in the airport.

The folks at Mars never let me down with the huge assortment of M&Ms related products.  If you've never been to an airport then you've probably only seen about 2% of the stuff Mars makes to support M&Ms.

I also love to check out the "local" products available in airports.  These are here as last minute purchases and are always over priced.  I particularly got a kick out of this jar of olives I found in the Athens airport, although I'm not sure I qualify to eat them.

The other thing one always finds at every airport is vending machines.  Much like the stores they're very expensive.  I'm assuming that this kind of thing is geared towards the business traveler that has a per diem that accounts for spending 5 euros for a cup of coffee out of a machine.

I also noticed something strange about this particular machine, it had a wire hanging out the side.  I'm not sure what one plugs into a coffee machine, but I think it would be really cool if it was a charging station for gadgets.  That way both you and your cell phone could get a charge in the morning.

Finally on the plane (after an hour or so delay), I noticed something strange on my box of food.  What language is the first one on this box.  I only ask because I've never heard anybody say "Bon appetite" in my life.  Most English speaking people I know use the French "Bon appetit", and if we did translate it we would probably say "Good appetite".  I always thought it was just a French expression that English speakers use.

Finally in Cyprus, I was sure to check out as much as I could on the snacking front.  In Nicosia I made a beeline across the border to see what kind of Turkish delight they had on offer.  I discovered a new version that I'd never seen before, it was a marshmallow based Turkish delight, and I hope to have a review up very soon.

I love venturing to the shops in Northern Cyprus, I particularly like the name of this place.

On the south side of the city I visited the local Tiger shop (really it's one of the best new chain stores in Europe), and I found these pretzels.  While the pretzels themselves were nothing impressive, I think they have one of the greatest names ever given to a salty snack.  They're called "These Pretzels are Making me Thirsty", a great homage to Seinfeld.

On this trip I learned about a love the Cypriot people have with carob.  Most people think of carob as being something to make fake chocolate out of, but here in Cyprus they love the stuff.  They make a carob syrup that they put on everything, and I picked up a bottle to sample later on.  I'm sure I'll post something about it in the future.

I'd also heard stories of a place called Platres Chocolate Workshop, in the Troodos mountains.  It is said to be the best place in the whole country to get chocolate, and to be a very uniquely Cypriot chocolate shop.  One doesn't normally associate Cyprus with chocolate, but really the island has so many flavours in their desserts that work so well with chocolate.

Platres Chocolate Workshop not only has a great selection of fine chocolates, but it has John, the chocolatier.  If you ever plan on visiting Platres Chocolate Workshop, make sure to book some time in your schedule.  John is a talker, and he describes his chocolate shop not as a place to buy chocolates, but a place to learn about chocolate.  The fact that you walk out of the shop with a box full of chocolates is an added bonus.  John will explain each and every chocolate he has in his case with a great amount of detail.  He explains where he's been to show off his skills, and what he's learned in his years making chocolate.  As you might expect, he even teaches classes on the subject of chocolate.  If you're in Cyprus and you love snacks and sweet treats, a visit to Platres Chocolate Workshop is an experience you must have.  As far as the chocolates go, well that's a review I'm writing right now.

My final night in Cyprus I felt it was important to sample a treat that I had on my last visit.  Strangely enough it comes from McDonald's, but I assure you it's very unique.

I've only ever seen them in Cypriot McDonald's, but the strawberry custard pie is one of the greatest desserts any fast food chain has ever produced.  The custard balances the sweet strawberry perfectly, and the crunchy deep fried crust adds the perfect texture.  If you re-shaped these and served them on a fine plate, even the finest gourmet would love them.  The perfect way to end my fun Cypriot adventure.

CC