Location: 1001 Islington Avenue, Etobicoke 
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca.html

I’ll admit that the Raptor Chicken Nacho Poutine kind of sent me into an existential panic.  Like, where did I go wrong in my life that I’m sitting alone in a McDonald’s on a Friday evening, scarfing down an ill-advised novelty poutine so I can review it for my food blog?  What wrong turn did I make to get here?

The Raptor Chicken Nacho Poutine is not good.  But hey, I ate it.  It caused me to look deep down inside myself and not like what I see, but I did eat it and finish it, so of course I’m going to blog about it.  Otherwise what was it all for??

Here’s how McDonald’s describes this thing: “this new offering is made with 100% Canadian-raised seasoned chicken, our World Famous Fries™ layered with stringy cheese curds and savoury gravy, topped with tortilla strips and drizzled with nacho cheese sauce.”

Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit about how bad this is.  It’s not gross, I guess, but I didn’t find anything about eating it to be particularly pleasant.  It’s mostly just an odd hodgepodge of flavours and textures that don’t particularly belong together.

I think the nacho cheese sauce is the worst offender.  I actually like nacho cheese sauce, but combined with the gravy and curds it had an odd sourness that I found off-putting.  The tortilla strips were fine, but again, they just seemed odd in the context of a poutine.

As for the big chunks of chicken that they had plopped on top — like everything else, they’re just kinda there, doing their own thing.  They don’t really add anything to the dish.

Then there’s the poutine base, which is fine, but I don’t think McDonald’s has a great poutine in the best of times, and this was certainly not the best of times (the fact that the fries were paler and soggier than usual didn’t help).