Hail the Gudetama (McD) burger

One thing I observed here in Hong Kong is that its retail sector is very dynamic and highly responsive to consumer preferences.

Case in point: you could almost mark the turn of the season from autumn to winter and winter to spring by the types of electronics they sell in home appliances stores. A few degrees drop in temperature and you'd see all the space warmers lining up the shelves. The moment it rises a few degrees, the warmers will vanish and dehumidifiers and fans will magically take their place. This year, the temperature dropped sharply a few days after the temperature rose consistently. You can imagine how many stores are out of stock by the time people say "screw it, I'm going to buy one so that I could use it next year!", which includes yours truly.

Luckily for people who love a good fast food meal like me, McDonald's here is pretty innovative as well. Almost every month, there will be either a new flavour of ice cream to try or a new set meal to sample. So far, memorable ones are as follows:

White burger (promotional photo on Pintrest)

Pulled burger (non halal version).
There is a halal version which looks
just like this, but offered a week
before this arrived.

So when I saw this on the daily free newspaper I get on the way to work... it's been all I anticipated since Thursday.

This made my week, seriously. From www.mcdonalds.com.hk

I know this sounds pathetic, but trying new McDonald's products has always been the highlight of my week everywhere I go. This sometimes gets be into trouble, because my work sort of implies that I should know that this sort of lifestyle is not something that your local health department would recommend.

Anyhow, the burger set retails for HKD 34 as of 27 May, which is called a "sampling price" on the menu when you buy it in person. Order it a-la-carte and the burger is around HKD 27 (if I remember correctly). The set comes with a medium fries and your choice of a drink you can do without of fizzy drink. 

The fries and drink are pretty standard, as you can already tell, but the burger, well, was interesting.

It comes in a cute box like this:

Too cute to rip apart.

Check out the side!

And finally... tada!

After ripping the top part of the box off, you'll see that the burger is made out of rice substituting the bread, an omelette, and a piece of fried chicken fillet.

At first taste, the rice was a tad too salty. But after you bite into the omelette (which contains a bit of corn) and the chicken, it isn't too bad. The chicken fillet was crunchy and not too dry, but given that the rice was salty I would prefer it to be a bit more spicy, like the one in the Spicy McChicken fillet. 

The omelette was okay, and I thought it a weird combo with the rest of the burger because it was a bit sweet. Overall, it is an interesting combination, but I wouldn't say this is the best seasonal burger I've tried. For those who like to try seasonal burgers such as this one once, I think it's worth a sample just for posterity's sake. 

Here is to hoping they bring back the Pulled Chicken Burger! 

(Probably unnecessary) PSA: Too much fast food is not really the best lifestyle choice you can make. I used to eat a lot of fast food and let's just say I feel much healthier now that I eat such meals only about once every two weeks. It's fun to try new things once in a while though!

Have a great weekend everybody :D