| Food | * * |
| Speed | * * 1/2 |
| Ambience | * 1/2 |
| Value | 5.0 |
| Cost | $ |
| Dish | Price | Value | Rating | |
| Big Mac Meal | $2.99 |
* * * | * * 1/2 | |
| Arch Deluxe w/ Cheese Meal | 3.49 |
* * | * * 1/2 | |
| Arch Deluxe Meal | 3.49 |
* * | * * * | |
| McChicken Meal | 3.29 |
* * * | * * * 1/2 | |
| Grilled Chicken Meal | 3.69 |
* * | * * 1/2 | |
| Hamburger | 0.59 |
* * * | * * * | |
| French Fries | * * * 1/2 | |||
| Hash Browns | * 1/2 | |||
| Egg McMuffin Meal | 2.65 |
* * 1/2 | * * |
In the world of faster food, McDonald's is the crown prince, just for sheer number of locations worldwide. The food quality isn't on par with a local burger joint, but for speed and edibility, McDonald's ranks right up there!
In the past few years, they've developed the concept of the Extra Value Meal and Supersize, because, after all, "Bigger is Better," and "The Best things in life are Free!" McDonald's has also been marketing the ideal of a strip mall McDonald's, or McDonald's Express. Of course, this is as big a misnomer as that whole Greenland/Iceland thing. McDonald's Express serves fewer people and has less space, so they are slower.
There are 4 stand-bys I've come to depend upon from McDonald's: the Big Mac, the McChicken Sandwich, the Quarter Pounder, and the Hamburger. Any of these make a good small meal or snack, depending on your needs. The Big Mac has the best value of any of them, because you get the feeling of being more full, because you feel you've eaten more (I mean, you get 2-1/8 lb. patties, instead of 1-1/4 lbs.). The McChicken is the simplest tasting: lettuce, mayonnaise, breaded chicken patty, and sesame seed bun. The Quarter Pounder with or without cheese is just one step up from the simple (and cheap) plain ol' hamburger.
Choose any one of these four, and you'll have a good square "meal." (Well, not square in the way Wendy's is square!) You get French Fries and a soft drink with that. McDonald's has the best French Fries: they're of varying sizes, so you can tell they might not be processed as much. And, if they're not too busy, you can even ask for them sans salt, because those McDonald's workers are really too zealous in the dispensing of salt on fries!
In the past couple years, McDonald's has developed a couple of new sandwiches: the McGrilled Chicken and the Arch Deluxe. The McGrilled Chicken is free from breading and is served with a choice of sauce: Mayonnaise, Light Mayonnaise, or Honey Mustard. The other, most recent development, is the Arch Deluxe (the sandwich for adults).
Obviously, the Arch follows the recipe for the basic McDonald's burger: Bun, sauce, burger, filler, bun. The filler here is onions, lettuce, tomato slice, cheese sauce (and bacon). The bun is pretty much the same, only larger, and the sauce is a light barbecue tomato sauce. Parts of the sandwich are decent, but they created a monster. The cheese sauce is definitely extraneous, has the texture and taste of melted plastic wrap, so ask for the Arch Deluxe without it. The rest of the filler is fine, except the workers at Mickey D's don't seem to have the sense to toss out the heel of the lettuce; I don't want it in my sandwich. Finally, the bacon is the key ingredient. Without it, you have a hamburger-flavored ball of lead. With it, you get a pretty decent tasting sandwich, which is, unfortunately, too expensive.
There is a lot of like about McDonald's. The food is good for a reasonable price, they're all over the place, and the food comes fairly fast. The restaurants also leave a lot to be desired: I've never been to one where there aren't lots of flies; the seats are too low, sometimes fixed to the floor; and the chairs are very uncomfortable.