I have eaten all four of the McDonald's "Worldwide Favorites" [View all]

[jmowreader]

McDonald's summer promotion this year is bringing food items that are popular in other countries to America. They are offering "for a limited time only":

The Grand McExtreme Bacon Burger, from Spain
The Tomato Mozzarella Chicken Sandwich, from Canada
Cheesy Bacon Fries, from Australia
Stroopwafel McFlurry, from the Netherlands

They're all pretty good. Let's delve a little further in.

Grand McExtreme Bacon Burger: The pride of Espana, this is a Quarter Pounder (your choice of single or double patty) with two slices of gouda cheese (on the single burger the cheese is on both sides of the patty; on the double, there's one on top of the patty stack and one between the two meat slabs), a few slices of McDonald's-standard bacon, and "McBacon" sauce. This glop is mostly mayo with something in there to turn it slightly orange, and a little bit of bacon in there just for GP. If you like the Quarter Pounder you'll like this fine; the bacon and sauce mingle with the nonstandard cheese to create a tasty burger. Given that, I won't pine for this when it departs the menu.

Tomato Mozzarella Chicken Sandwich: This is seriously good. You get your choice of crispy (which I got) or grilled chicken, mozzarella cheese, a slice of tomato, lettuce, and a sauce which is basically ketchup and mayo with added spices. The boys in Atlanta who run Chick-fil-A should be sweating a little right now; this is a hell of a lot better sandwich than they serve, and you can eat it on Sunday at least for now. If they put bacon on this, it would be even better. Maybe there's a way to have them add it; not sure because the Mickey D's menu is pretty much carved in stone.

Cheesy Bacon Fries: Imagine taking an order of McDonald's fries, slapping a scoop of warmed-up Cheez Wiz on top, and sprinkling bacon bits on top of that. Then go to McDonald's because that's exactly what's in the box of Cheesy Bacon Fries. The way they come from the kitchen they're a little overwhelming, but there's a cure for that: Buy an order of regular fries at the same time. When they come to you, dump the order of regular fries into the box of Cheesy Bacon Fries and shake the living fuck out of the box to more evenly distribute the cheese. Then they'll be excellent.

Stroopwafel McFlurry: The stroopwafel is Holland's answer to biscotti. It is a Dutch delicacy consisting of two thin waffle cookies glued together with caramel. The official way to eat them is to lay them on top of a cup of hot beverage until the caramel softens. They are really good. The process for making the stroopwafel McFlurry is to take a case of stroopwafels outside, throw it off the roof of the building about ten times, then stir some of the shrapnel into soft-serve ice cream. There is absolutely no way anyone could fuck this up. It tastes a lot like a caramel sundae with cookie crumbs sprinkled on it. If you like caramel sundaes, you'll love this.

Ranking the four:
The best one is, of course, the Stroopwafel McFlurry. Unfortunately, it's a dessert.

The best entree is the Tomato Mozzarella Chicken Sandwich. I don't think the Grand McExtreme Bacon Burger is quite as good, but other reviewers seem to prefer it to the chicken sandwich. You can't really go wrong either way.

The Cheesy Bacon Fries? This is not CBF's first rodeo, and the last time they were on the menu people just went totally apeshit for them. (Which is why they're back. Hard to argue with success.) I can eat a few, but there's too much flavor in them for my tastes. You might like them fine.