Eating off the Hill: McDonald's Chicken Big Mac a bland sloppy mess

While I consider it my mission to chronicle the fast food chicken sandwich wars, I knew going in that the limited-time stunt sammy from McDonald's, the Chicken Big Mac, would not be a worthy entry. But in the interests of science, I brought one back to the office the other day. And it managed to fail to meet my zero expectations.

I should confess, I've never been a Big Mac fan. I've always been all about the quarter pounder with cheese -- which, in France, they call a royale with cheese. Why they don't call it a royale avec fromage I don't know. Move on already. And I've never had a burger and thought, you know what this needs? More bun! Like really.

But anyway, try the Chicken Big Mac I did -- I did hold the pickles and, thankfully, the special order did not upset them. Besides, there was plenty of pickle taste in the Big Mac sauce.

In short, it was a bland and sloppy mess that after a few bites was a real challenge to eat. Between the heavy sauce and the half a head of lettuce shred, the patties were quickly slip-sliding around. I like to eat an orderly sandwich, without my patty to bun ratio getting out of whack.

And the patties. They seemed to be created for this sandwich, which is an usual fast food move. Taco Bell has perfected the supply chain-friendly practice of using the same dozen ingredients in one hundred different ways. But not McDonald's, it seems.

The McChicken or the fancier fillets would probably too big to replicate the Big Mac esthetic, but the junior chicken patties could have worked. And being a bit peppery would have had more taste than the bland new patties they developed.

I will not be having this sandwich again. Back to the royale with cheese for me.

For the record, God tier chicken sammy is still the spicy chicken sandwich from Popeye's. I've had it several times since that review fresh in store and it is amazing.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Eating on the rails: Three trains, three lunches with VIA Rail

I took the train down to Scarborough a few weeks back in business, which is really the best way to travel by train. But pro-tip: the bar car usually opens around 11AM so schedule your trip accordingly. After all, you don’t want to pay a premium for just an omelette – and they hardly ever have ketchup.

So I planned my trip accordingly to be able to enjoy a few enroute rum and diets and, as it worked out, I ended up having to change trains in Kingston with an hour layover. Naturally, my question going in was: would I get lunch on each train. The answer? Oh, yes indeed.

On boarding, the attendant asked me if I wanted lunch early. Oh do I, good sir? With first choice of the menu options I went for the baked hake, asparagus, cherry tomatoes, a Greek salad, a bonus extra bread roll, and apple cake. And, of course, a rum and diet.

I always say you can’t go wrong with the fish on VIA Rail. And this fish didn’t disappoint. It was cooked perfectly with a nice cream sauce. But even the asparagus was cooked correctly. The Greek salad was fresh. And the apple cake had actual apple (you should try it with your apple fritters, Tim Hortons). I can honestly say this is the best train lunch I have had in my memory. I demolished everything but the olives.

After a layover and a diet coke in the Kingston VIA lounge, it was on to my next train to continue my journey to Guildwood. This train was coming from Montreal and offered a different menu, but there were few choices left for the late boarders.

The couple behind me got the last two cold salmon plates, which would have been my choice. Instead I was left with the beef bourguignon with mashed potatoes, another Greek salad, bread roll, and a cookie. I usually avoid the beef on planes and trains as it’s very easy to overcook. While it wasn’t my first choice it wasn’t bad – warm and hearty for a fall day. The cookie was stale, but the salad was fresh.

And talk about a healthy pour on my rum and diet…

For my train back to Ottawa at the end of the trip I had no connections, so just one lunch. It was the same menu as my first train and while I briefly considered getting the fish again, I opted instead for the cold chicken plate on spinach and a quinoa salad. The Greek salad was back again, as was the apple cake. Red wine chaser.

The chicken was good, the taziki could have used more pop, the quinoa salad was enjoyable. Apple pie was just as good as the first time, very cinnamony. I like Greek salad but they cold mix it up a bit.

All in all, some enjoyable train lunches. The apple cake is a keeper, way better than the usual cookies.

But please, VIA, bring back the meal pre-order option.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Eating in lockdown: The saga of the Popeye's Sandwich

 I've long liked that chicken from Popeye's. So much better than KFC. A spicy option, quality fries, biscuits, mac and cheese, corn on the cob -- so good. 

There really weren't any convenient locations for me for awhile though. Living in Toronto, I would hike to the one downtown on Yonge from time to time. When the 2015 campaign was underway there was one just down the street from the campaign office, and as this one offered Halal chicken it became a frequent fixture on the campaign office buffet. When I moved to Ottawa, the nearest one was a two-trip bus away in Alta Vista, so it remained a rare treat.

Then one opened in the Glebe, inside the former KFC turned Rogers Wireless store. There was the expected murmur of discontent from the Glebians, though tempered by past fights lost over Boston Pizza and McDonald's -- though they seem fine with Whole Foods and Starbucks.

Anyways, it was good to have a Popeye's close to home and they did busy business, and I made a few off hours visits due to their limited seating to get my chicken fix. But since pandemic times we've had to turn to Uber Eats, and it has not been a good experience. They do a lot of food delivery business at Popeye's, and they don't do it well.

Nearly every time I've ordered, they've gotten something wrong. They forget an item. They run out of something, so they just make a substitution with no consultation. So many times I'm given the wrong order entirely. If you're there in person, you can make sure you get the right thing, so they're less likely to screw you over. Less so with delivery. Still, many times I've had to complain to Uber Eats for refunds and they're usually good with it, but still, I wanted what I ordered.

Which brings me to the long-awaited flagship Popeye's Chicken Sandwich. I had long since given up on Popeye's via Uber Eats -- fool me four times, shame on you, fool me five times, you can't get fooled again -- but I wasn't going to go down there with dining closed and photograph a chicken sandwich in the parking lot.

Anyway, long store short, on the second order attempt I actually received the chicken sandwich I ordered for a work lunch, standing on Wellington Street to retrieve it and taking in inside passed the undoubtedly jealous Parliamentary security. Opening the bag and my desk and breathing a sigh of relief to find the long-awaited spicy chicken sammy inside.

I plated, photographed, dug in and it was ... OK. After all that, it was OK. It was good. It was a perfectly serviceable chicken sandwich. Probably the best of the fast food chicken sandwiches I've had. But the years of hype, the lines and fights over this sandwich in the US, the chicken sandwich showdowns, the long wait for it to come to Canada, with all that build-up it just underwhelmed.

I think we live in an era where we have been conditioned to lower our expectations. A decade or two ago, this sandwich would have been what you would reliably expect from a fast food chicken sammy. As I think I wrote about before, I still remember the big, juicy KFC Big Crunch of my junior high years. This Popeye's sammy reminded me of that. And it only shines because of the decline in quality over the years we have experienced in fast food.

 Anyway, some 600 words later. The brioche bun was good, the breading was well-seasoned, the patty of good size and the chicken juicy, and the spicy mayo did its job.

I haven’t had it since. When we can dine in safely again, I’ll be back. It’s as quality a fast food chicken Sammy as you’ll find. But it’s not worth the hype, or the Uber Eats Roulette with Popeye’s Glebe.

Other chicken sammies

• KFC is cannon fodder in the chicken sandwich wars
• Spicy Big Mary Sandwich at Mary Brown's

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Eating in quarantine: Chicken tacos with homemade flour tortillas

In the before times I didn’t do that much cooking outside the weekends. But now, with nothing but time on my hands I’m cooking all the time and trying some new things from time to time. I haven’t jumped on the breadmaking bandwagon, but I did come close by making homemade flour tortillas for my chicken tacos yesterday.

Some googling had confirmed it’s a pretty simple recipe and it really was, and with a few technique changes I was quite happy by the end with how most of them turned out. And I already have some ideas to kick the next batch up a notch. But first, taco fixings.

After my weekly trip to the newish Farm Boy on Metcalfe (way better than Massine’s, but keep that on the DL) I was well provisioned with fresh veggies and all the fixings. First step, dice and sauté my chicken breasts with garlic and red peper flakes with avocado oil, then set aside.

While the chicken was cooking I prepped my yellow pepper, onion and mushrooms, and then set the chicken aside and proceeded to sautee the veggies in the same manner.

I picked up a packet of chicken taco sauce at Farm Boy as a seasoning cheat (my limited pantry is pretty full already) so after heating the sauce in my pan I added back in the chicken and veggies and set that aside to simmer while I moved on to the tortillas.

I found a simple flour tortilla recipe on the interwebs which I modified based on the comments and my own whims. Mix two cups flour and one tablespoon sea salt, then add 1/3 cup avocado oil (called for olive but works fine) and then stir in ¾ cup of water. What you get is a pretty stick ball of dough you let rest for a few minutes.

There are two keys to success here: use lots of flour, and after portioning the dough into 8, roll them into balls. This will help you get closer to roundish tortillas.

While heating my cast iron pan on medium heat, I rolled out a ball of dough as thinly as I could.

I then very carefully transferred it to the pan, which I had given a spray with cooking spray. About sixty to ninety seconds is enough time to roll out the next one.

Some nice light browning as the other side cooks after the flip, and then the completed tortilla goes into a pan in my pre-heated oven to stay warm while the tortilla making continues.

Now it was taco time. My chicken veggie mix was complemented by tomatoes, green onions, salsa, sour cream and, just for fun in a last minute addition, pineapple. I was so excited that for my first taco, I forgot the cheese.

The pineapple was a pleasant addition, and the tortillas were warm, tasty and certainly had more texture than the store-bought versions.

Homemade tortillas are defintiely much better than the store versions, no surprise there. Without a tortilla press they don't look super round or uniform but that's fine, they're bespoke. It's all simple ingredients you likely have in your pantry and the technique is easy enough. What it does take is time, maybe half an hour to prep and cook eight tortillas. But when you have time, as we do now, it's definitely worth doing.

Next time I'd like to try to fancy up the dough with some seasonings. Definitely think there's room for innovation there.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Eating off the Hill: Spicy Big Mary Sandwich at Mary Brown's

I like me a spicy chicken sammy. I remember back in the day, when KFC didn't suck (or maybe my standards were just lower) I was all about the spicy Big Crunch. Unfortunately, I've mostly missed out on the fast food spicy chicken sandwich wars that raged South of our border -- Popeye's didn't bring their's to Canada, and Chick-fil-A is on the no-go list.

A late entrant into the game though was a regional Canadian player with a spicy version of their hero chicken sammy, the Spicy Big Mary.

Mary Brown's is a Newfoundland (& Labrador?) fried chicken chain beloved for their potato taters. People get excited by them. I don't. I get upset. If I'm going to have fries I want them thin and crispy with as little potato as possible, so taters are a slap in the face to me and all I hold dear.

Anyway, MB's have been sprouting up everywhere recently -- apparently there are a few in suburban Ottawa. I first noticed them in Scarborough during the campaign last fall, and stopped in one day for lunch. Wasn't impressed, didn't blog it. Had a two piece fried chicken and found it nothing special. Passed on the taters; see above.

Still, I heard they were doing a spicy sammy and I hadn't tried their sandwich yet so on my last trip back to the borough just before everything changed, I stopped by on my way to the hotel and got one to go -- hold the pickle. I don't like pickles.

It was a solid spicy chicken sammy. The bun was your standard fast food seasame; didn't really bring much to the party but didn't detract either. Good spicy mayo, nice kick though not Scarborough spicy, and in a class move they give you the sauce on top and on the bottom -- don't see that often in the spicy sammy game. The chicken breast as meaty, juicy and cooked fresh to order. I couldn't tell for sure if the patty itself was spicy -- that would be next level -- but it was likely just their regular Big Mary chicken sammy patty. Their marketing materials imply it is, but I couldn't detect it.

Anyway, as I said, solid spicy chicken sammy. Probably doesn't hold up to Popeye's or Voldemort's, but would eat again. They need to up their bun game though to compete in the majors.

And that's it for food I took pictures of when we could still go outside and eat. I shall now order delivery to bring you the food contant you crave. Up first, local donuts...

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers

Eating off the Hill: Canada's breakfasts need more chicken

Bacon. Sausage. Ham, Meaty breakfast staples. But who decreed breakfast needs to be so porky? Sensing the need for giving Canadians more of a reason to wake up in the mornings during these challenging days, McDonald's recently did us all a favour and introduced a new offering: breakfast chicken.

In my last career I used to travel through the States a fair bit, and so got to experience a fair bit of regional vrariety accross the McDonald's menu. Many parts of the US have biscuits in the mornings, for example, including chicken on a biscuit. I remember having a Steak McMuffin in Denver one time that put a smile on my face on a Colorado morning. But in Canada, we haven't seen that much breakfast menu innovation since the McGriddle.

So I was happy to notice this week that McDonald's had brought in breakfast chicken. It's an easy move for them logistically, as it's all existing menu items -- they're taking their existing junior chicken patty and offering it to you either on a McGriddle plain, or on an English Muffin with cheese and mayo.

I never really got into the McGriddle, and reviews I read lamented the lack of sauce (would need to be a syrup, as mayo would clash with the sweetness of the McGriddle) and so I went with the Chicken McMuffin.

It was quite tasty. I would take it over my go-to Sausage McMuffin any day. They could also kick it up by offering the spicy mayo they're using on their daytime Spicy Habanero McChicken. And I haven't tried it yet, but I imagine the kiosk would allow you to add bacon for an upcharge -- will try that next time for sure.

It's available for a limited time, but I hope it sticks around. Canada's breakfasts need more chicken.

Recommend this Post on Progressive Bloggers