REVIEW: McDonald’s Cheddar Onion McChicken Sandwich

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McDonald's Cheddar Onion McChicken Sandwich

McDonald’s has been coming on pretty strong lately.

I swear, it seems like every week, they’ve got something new on the menu. Despite whatever reservations you have about spending your hard-earned cash on food that could make you die faster if consumed in excess, one must admit that McDonald’s has pulled out all the stops to keep you coming back for more, and it seems to be working. McDonald’s knows you want to leave them, but they refuse to let you go.

It’s like at any moment, they’ll show up in their vintage convertible outside your school, beat down your best friend in a fit of jealous rage, then prison-tattoo your name on their chest right above the words “4-EVA.” But don’t get me wrong, I approve of their efforts so far — most have been radical and delicious. It’s true that after a very long time of not setting foot inside a McDonald’s, I too have been lured back by the promise of novelty and exciting new flavor sensations. Among them is the Cheddar Onion McChicken.

Sorry, Cheddar, but after sampling this new item, I can confidently say that Onion deserves top-billing, for it’s clearly the star of the show. The Cheddar Onion McChicken is very similar to the other new chicken sandwich (Jalapeno Cheddar McChicken) since it’s constructed with white cheddar cheese, lettuce, and a (subtly) spicy chicken patty, but it’s an entirely different flavor experience. The combination of caramelized onions with the white cheddar slice creates a slightly creamy texture that, thankfully, isn’t slimy. The breaded chicken patty has a wonderful crunch that complements the smoothness of the cheese and onions. Now, I’m a fan of grilled onions, so the fact that the first bite of my sandwich was bursting with onion flavor was a good thing.

McDonald's Cheddar Onion McChicken Sandwich Fully Clothed

The only drawback is the bland white cheddar. They had already slapped that white cheddar on the Jalapeno Cheddar McChicken, and it didn’t add anything to the overall experience except gooeyness. On the Cheddar Onion McChicken, the cheese seems smoother, but it still doesn’t add much in the way of flavor.

At first, the idea of pairing a breaded chicken breast with onions and cheese didn’t seem all that exciting to me, but this sandwich was pretty bomb. McDonald’s has figured out how to keep you locked in their strong embrace even when you know they’re dangerous.

The franchise has made a bold (for them) move by trying out these jazzed-up yet affordable chicken sandwiches, and I think they did well with the Cheddar Onion McChicken. On the pleasure scale, it’s no sexy rollercoaster ride, but it’s better than finding your dog’s severed head. Maybe we have nothing to fear after all.

(Nutrition Facts – 1 sandwich – 370 calories, 140 calories from fat, 16 grams of fat, 5 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 40 milligrams of cholesterol, 1050 milligrams of sodium, 41 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of dietary fiber, 6 grams of sugar, 17 grams of protein.)

Item: McDonald’s Cheddar Onion McChicken sandwich
Price: $1.49
Size: N/A
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Carmelized onions are the bomb. Mid-90’s teen thrillers starring Mark Wahlberg. Chicken patty is delightfully crispy on the outside. Sexy roller coaster rides. Costs a buck forty-nine.
Cons: Available in limited markets. Severed heads. As usual, white cheddar cheese doesn’t add much in the way of flavor. Prison tattoos immortalizing your L.O.V.E.

REVIEW: McDonald’s Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie

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McDonald's Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie

Since I live on a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that’s known for its pineapples and mangoes (but mostly pineapples), you might be thinking I could make a better smoothie than McDonald’s new Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie.

However, while my magic smoothie making hands/magic massage hands/magic magic hands would probably, nay, most definitely make a better tasting smoothie made with fresh fruits, magic, and aloha, it wouldn’t be an overall better smoothie, which should be one that is not only tasty, but also reasonably priced and easy to make.

If I were to use my superb skills to make a mango pineapple smoothie, it would turn out to be one expensive smoothie. Because, while the volcanic soil on this rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean bear these two tropical fruits, they aren’t cheap fruits if you buy them from a store, farmer’s market, vendor on the side of the road, or on the black market.

Sure, I could steal the fruits by sticking them down my pants from anyone of the places I previously mentioned, but while the mangoes will make it look like I have huge cajones, the pineapples and their spiky skin make them the worst possible fruit to stick down my pants.

So instead of purchasing fruits that may taint poke me and are a pain to cut into pieces because of either a tough skin or a huge pit in the middle of it, I think I’d prefer to have McDonald’s prepare their Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie for me.

If you ever want to make a Jamba Juice employee jealous, tell them how easy it is for their McDonald’s counterpart to make a smoothie. While a Jamba jockey has to physically dump each ingredient into a blender’s container, all a McDonald’s worker needs to do is punch a couple of buttons on their blender and then watch it dump and blend all the ingredients. It’s like something you’d see on the Jetsons.

The McDonald’s Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie is made using fruit purees, low-fat yogurt, and ice. It has a consistency that’s almost perfectly in between thick and watery with tiny ice crystals floating throughout it. The smoothie smells like a ripe mango and its flavor is mostly mango with a little pineapple at the end, giving your taste buds a tasty tropical 1-2 punch. For fruits that come in the form of purees that are sucked through a tube and spit out into a blender, I was surprised by how much they tasted like the fresh versions of the fruit. I was also a little weirded out by how fresh the puree tasted.

Overall, I think the McDonald’s Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie is better tasting than the original Real Fruit Smoothie flavors — Wild Berry and Strawberry-Banana. Is it better tasting than what I could whip up? No, because when you put a blender in front of me, I make refreshment gold. But I think it’s cheaper and easier to make than whatever I could create. Plus, I don’t have to worry about pineapples poking holes in my crotch.

(Nutrition Facts – 12 ounces – 220 calories, 10 calories from fat, 1 gram of fat, 1 gram of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 5 milligrams of cholesterol, 40 milligrams of sodium, 49 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 49 grams of sugar, 3 grams of protein, 45% vitamin A, 25% vitamin C, 8% calcium, and 2% iron.)

Item: McDonald’s Mango Pineapple Real Fruit Smoothie
Price: $2.49
Size: Regular
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 8 out of 10
Pros: Best tasting McDonald’s Real Fruit Smoothie. Gives your taste buds a tasty tropical 1-2 punch. Nice consistency. My magic smoothie making hands/magic massage hands/magic magic hands.
Cons: Pineapples poking holes in my crotch. It’s a little weird the fruit puree tastes like fresh fruit. Prices of mangoes and pineapples. Cutting mangoes and pineapples. Stealing fruit.

REVIEW: Ben & Jerry’s Bonnaroo Buzz

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Ben & Jerry's Bonnaroo Buzz

Confession time: I was once a fan of a jam band. It’s not the sort of thing one admits to easily, but I feel like we’ve built up a level of trust. For years I resisted efforts by friends to convert me to the jam band mentality. In college my roommates would eagerly put on Phish’s “Meatstick,” and I’d shake my head while leaving for class and still be rolling my eyes an hour later when I returned in time to hear the final notes. What was the appeal of long, rambling songs that were the musical equivalent of Grampa Simpson telling a story? But in late 2001, I got dragged along to see O.A.R. play at a local club, and I… just… connected. It was a perfect storm of the general contentment and malaise that sets in midway through senior year, meeting laid-back songs about drinking, hanging out with friends, and crazy games of poker.

And with that, I was hooked. I went to a half-dozen O.A.R. concerts, successfully converted friends and family, watched them on Letterman… and for a brief period of time, I longed to attend Bonnaroo. Never very seriously — I think even then I realized only liking one band was not a good basis for attending a three-day musical event. But still, it remains the one festival I’ve ever really given any serious thought to, and my ears perk up whenever I hear it mentioned. Enter: Ben and Jerry and their latest hippie offering. Not to get stereotyped as the ice cream guy, but today we’re looking at Bonnaroo Buzz, yet another Fair Trade-certified flavor from everyone’s favorite not-necessarily-gay duo from Vermont.

For starters, please don’t ask me to explain how the flavor has any connection with Bonnaroo whatsoever — it’s coffee and malt ice cream with whiskey caramel swirls and English toffee pieces mixed in. Seems like a more appropriate title might be “Flavo(u)rs of the British Isles,” or perhaps “Feck th’ English (Though Their Toffee’s Not Bad),” but I guess that would be a hard sell to your more conservative grocery stores. It still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, though, because while I’m certain many of the attendees at any given Bonnaroo are indeed buzzed, I think that’s an entirely different buzz from the kind one gets from coffee. I like imagining Ben and Jerry trying to explain it to consumers: “Naw man, we wanted to put the good stuff in, but ‘the Man’ wouldn’t let us. It’s cool though, just talk to Steve, he’ll hook you up. In the meantime we just put in whiskey, and coffee, and toffee, ’cause that totally rhymes, man! Whoa… did you ever really look at the back of your hand?” Then it’s just twenty minutes of giggling.

Ben & Jerry's Bonnaroo Buzz Container

Bonnaroo Buzz has the misfortune of having to follow up on me reviewing two good-to-very-good Ben & Jerry’s flavors, and unfortunately it doesn’t quite measure up. Coffee ice cream fans may want to bump that score up by a point or two, but it just doesn’t hit exactly the right balance, with not enough caramel flavor spread throughout. Or rather, the smoothness of the caramel is able to briefly balance out the coffee bitterness, but it fades quickly while the bitterness lingers, which is not ideal. The toffee tastes good, crunchy but not teeth-shatteringly hard, although there were two massive chunks that really needed to be broken up into smaller pieces; not sure if that’s standard or if I just got an “off” carton. Still, I can’t say that the toffee flavor ever blended seamlessly with the ice cream so much as being two decent but distinct tastes. And I don’t know about you, but when I see the word “whiskey” on any product, I expect to be drunk after I’ve consumed a quarter of it, so strike three, Bonnaroo Buzz.

In general terms there’s a limit to how “bad” Ben and Jerry’s ice cream can really be — you’d still take it if it was offered to you — but compared to many of its forebears and peers, Bonnaroo Buzz isn’t in the same class. For O.A.R. fans, it’s like when they start playing “Delicate Few”… you kind of look forward to it, but then when you hear it you remember it’s not really one of your favorites and it’s probably time for a pee break. But, hell — every song is someone’s favorite, so if coffee ice cream is your thing, give it a shot. The rest of us will be in line for the bathroom.

(Nutrition Facts — 1/2 cup — 280 calories, 130 calories from fat, 14 grams of total fat, 9 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol, 115 milligrams of sodium, 33 grams of total carbohydrates, 0 grams of dietary fiber, 25 grams of sugars, 4 grams of protein, 10% vitamin A, 0% vitamin C, 10% calcium, and 0% iron)

Item: Ben & Jerry’s Bonnaroo Buzz
Price: $4.79
Size: 1 pint
Purchased at: Acme
Rating: 5 out of 10
Pros: “Hey Girl” live. Senior year malaise. Getting your British on. Smooth caramel. Solid but not adamantine toffee. Ice cream that could conceivably get you drunk.
Cons: “Meatstick.” Getting stereotyped as the ice cream reviewer. Names that don’t make sense. Lingering coffee bitterness. Toffee boulders. Ice cream that doesn’t actually get you drunk.

REVIEW: Kellogg’s Limited Edition Disney Pixar Cars 2 Cereal

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Kellogg's Limited Edition Cars 2 Cereal

If you truly love your children, you will not make them shave a particular area on your body as one of their chores and you will not buy them Kellogg’s Limited Edition Disney Pixar Cars 2 Cereal.

Even if they beg, whine, cry, threaten to run away, tell you they don’t love you anymore, or refuse to shave that small patch of hair on your back you have trouble reaching, you shouldn’t buy this poor excuse for a sugary kids’ cereal.

I don’t care if the cereal would be perfect in your child’s Disney Pixar Cars 2 bowl on top of their Disney Pixar Cars 2 placemat, which is next to their Disney Pixar Cars 2 backpack that has their Disney Pixar Cars 2 folders and Disney Pixar Cars 2 pencils. If you want your children to experience sugary cereals that they’ll be slightly ashamed of eating when they’re in their 30’s, please don’t try to do it with Kellogg’s Limited Edition Disney Pixar Cars 2 Cereal.

There are so many better sugary kids’ cereals you can give your child, like Cocoa Pebbles, Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Fruity Pebbles, Smorez, Cocoa Puffs, Honeycomb, Trix, Frosted Flakes, Count Chocula…Oh dear, I think I just got a cavity and gained a pound from typing that list.

So what’s wrong with Kellogg’s Limited Edition Disney Pixar Cars 2 Cereal? It’s as boring and confusing as the description printed on its box, which reads, “Frosted Multigrain Cereal with Red-Circled Fun.” I know the “red-circled fun” they’re talking about is the red-colored cereal, but is that really the best way to describe it? Because the only other red-circled fun I can think of are hickeys, and they’re a lot more fun than red-colored cereal.

Kellogg's Limited Edition Cars 2 Cereal in Bowl

The cereal stays crunchy in milk for a decent amount of time, but it tastes kind of like Cheerios, which isn’t a good thing since when it comes to good sugary kids’ cereals, the boring-flavored Cheerios doesn’t come to mind.

I thought with the red-colored cereal it would have a flavor from a red-colored fruit, like cherries, apples, strawberries, watermelon, raspberries, cranberries, pomegranate…Oh dear, I think I just met the new USDA dietary recommendations by typing that list. However, the Red #40-dyed cereal tastes exactly like the Red #40-less tan cereal.

This is disappointing to me, but I think it’s going to be more disappointing for a child. If they’re regular eaters of sugary kids’ cereals, they’re used to the idea that red-colored cereals have a fruity flavor. So when they put this cereal in their mouth, they’re probably not going to like it and say so using whatever new words they learned on the school playground.

Best case scenario: Crap.

Worst case scenario: What the fuck is this shit?

(Nutrition Facts – 3/4 cup (just cereal) – 100 calories, 10 calories from fat, 1 gram of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 0 grams of trans fat, 0 milligrams of cholesterol, 200 milligrams of sodium, 50 milligrams of potassium, 23 grams of carbohydrates, 2 grams of fiber, 10 grams of sugar, 11 grams of other carbohydrates, 3 grams of protein, and a bunch of vitamins and minerals.)

Item: Kellogg’s Limited Edition Disney Pixar Cars 2 Cereal
Price: $3.29
Size: 10.9 ounces
Purchased at: Target
Rating: 4 out of 10
Pros: 12 grams of whole grain per serving. Stays crunchy in milk for a decent amount of time. Fortified with vitamins and minerals. If you like Cheerios, it kind of tastes like Cheerios. Giving hickeys.
Cons: It tastes like Cheerios. Red cereal tastes like the tan cereal. Poor excuse for a sugary kids’ cereal. You children learning new vocabulary words on the playground. Won’t satisfy those who like their cereals sweet. Trying to hide hickeys.

REVIEW: McDonald’s “New” Chicken McNuggets Sauces (Creamy Ranch, Honey Mustard, Spicy Buffalo, and Sweet Chili)

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"New" Chicken McNuggets Sauces (Creamy Ranch, Honey Mustard, Spicy Buffalo, and Sweet Chili)

McDonald’s didn’t put much effort into creating their “new” Chicken McNugget sauces, because they’re mostly the same dipping sauces from their Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips line. Since they’re not putting much effort into their sauces, I’m not going to put much effort into this review of their sauces.

How much work am I going to put into reviewing these sauces? Significantly less than what I put into playing this McNuggets dipping sauce memory game that McDonald’s is using to promote the sauces on their website.

By the way, my high score was 712 points.

For starters, to show how little effort I’m going to put into this review, I’m just going to list all the “new” flavors, but not take the time to put them in alphabetical order: Spicy Buffalo, Honey Mustard, Sweet Chili, and Creamy Ranch. Then, I’m just going to link to my Sweet Chili sauce review from last year and then not mention Sweet Chili anymore.

I’m also going to link to my my Chicken Selects review from 2004 which included my thoughts on the Spicy Buffalo sauce. Although, the sauce might’ve changed over the years, so I will say the “new” Spicy Buffalo sauce was tasty, spicy, and orange. It tasted like other buffalo sauces I’ve had, but it had a bit more kick than my beloved Hot Mustard Sauce and it was definitely my favorite of the four “new” flavors.

Geez, that was more effort than I wanted to exert for the Spicy Buffalo Sauce. I’ll do better with the last two sauces.

"New" Chicken McNuggets Sauces Upskirt (Creamy Ranch, Honey Mustard, Spicy Buffalo, and Sweet Chili)

Honey Mustard tasted like a sweet weak dijon mustard and Creamy Ranch tasted like the salad dressing you’d find in the middle of a barely-touched vegetable platter at a barbeque.

How’s that for little effort?

Overall, McDonald’s “new” Chicken McNuggets Sauces range from decent to good, but none of them can compete with my beloved Hot Mustard Sauce. Besides that, it’s hard to get excited about sauces that we could’ve dipped our McNuggets into for years if we either asked nicely, paid 10 to 20 cents, or flirted with the right cashier for the McDonald’s Chicken Selects sauces.

(Nutrition Facts – Not available at McDonald’s website or I didn’t want to put any effort into finding out what they are.)

Item: McDonald’s “New” Chicken McNuggets Sauces (Creamy Ranch, Honey Mustard, Spicy Buffalo, and Sweet Chili)
Price: 2 Free With 10 Pc. McNuggets, 30 Cents For Each Extra
Size: 1 ounce
Purchased at: McDonald’s
Rating: 6 out of 10 (Creamy Ranch)
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Honey Mustard)
Rating: 7 out of 10 (Spicy Buffalo)
Rating: 4 out of 10 (Sweet Chili)
Pros: More sauces for you to choose from. Spicy Buffalo had good flavor and a decent kick. Hot Mustard Sauce. Flirting with McDonald’s employees to get Chicken Selects sauces.
Cons: McDonald’s didn’t put much effort into the “new” sauces. Sweet Chili sauce is still mediocre. Honey Mustard tasted like a sweet weak dijon mustard. McDonald’s calling these sauces “new.” Not putting much effort into this review.

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