Fast Food Review – Page 13

Mexican Chipotle Burger at McDonald’s

Published on September 26, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 1138 Victoria Street North, Kitchener
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca.html

McDonald’s recently came out with a couple of “new” (I’m pretty sure both have been on the menu before) items called McTasters: the Thai Sweet Chili Chicken Sandwich, and the Mexican Chipotle Burger.

I tried the Mexican Chipotle Burger, and it was surprisingly decent. It’s definitely one of the better new things I’ve tried at McDonald’s recently.

The burger comes with “chipotle aioli sauce, crispy tortilla strips and a juicy beef patty, all on a toasted sesame and paprika ciabatta bun.”

It’s tasty. The chipotle aioli sauce basically tastes like the dressing you’ll find on any number of Southwest salads, only with a mild spicy kick. The crunchy tortilla strips add a nice bit of texture, and the cheese (which is unmentioned on the menu for some reason) ties it all together.

The bun is interesting, too — it’s chewier and more dense than the typical McDonald’s bun, but it works.

It helps that the beef is the classic small McDonald’s patty, and not the Angus or the Quarter Pounder patty that they use in most of their limited-time items. When it comes to the beef at McDonald’s, less is more; the slim old-school patty is the perfect size.

Fried Chicken and Spaghetti at Jollibee

Published on August 27, 2019September 28, 2025 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 800 Boyer Boulevard, Mississauga (inside Seafood City Supermarket)
Website: http://jollibeecanada.com/

Jollibee opened locations in Scarborough and Mississauga in the last couple of years, and they were both immediately swamped. People love Jollibee with a passion that’s unusual in the world of fast food.

I tried visiting the Mississauga location a couple of times when it first opened, and both times the line was way too intense. But I figured it was safe enough to give it another shot, and yeah, the extreme crowds have died down. I showed up at around 11:20 AM on a Friday and was able to order immediately, though by the time I left a line had already formed.

I ordered the Crispy Chicken Perfect Pair, which comes with a piece of fried chicken, Jolly Spaghetti, and a drink.

I assumed I’d like the fried chicken (and I did), but the spaghetti was a bit more of a question mark. It’s topped with meat sauce with chunks of hot dog mixed in, and it’s notorious for being quite sweet. I was expecting something in line with Chef Boyardee.

It’s interesting; the sauce is, as advertised, quite sweet. But it’s also tangy, and kind of reminded me of a cross between a traditional tomato sauce and barbecue sauce. It feels like it shouldn’t work, but it kinda does. The salty hot dog slices help to round out the sweetness, as does the cheese on top.

The spaghetti itself isn’t exactly al dente, but it’s not mushy, either. The whole thing is oddly compelling. I liked it.

The fried chicken is more straightforward. It basically tastes like KFC original recipe, but with a slightly more subtle flavour. The chicken was nicely crispy on its exterior and very juicy inside. It’s a quality piece of fried chicken.

Even the gravy is a bit more unique than you might think; it’s definitely not the typical brown gravy you’ll find at a fast food joint. It’s a little bit sweet, and there’s a spice in there I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It works really well with the fried chicken.

I ordered the peach mango pie for dessert, which is crispy and fried, as it should be. The filling is basically a fruit-flavoured goo (there were maybe like two or three tiny bits of fruit in there), but it’s still quite tasty. It’s basically impossible to go wrong with a deep fried pie.

Okay: I get it. I get the lines. It’s certainly not the best thing ever, but I can see why people who grew up with Jollibee have a deep fondness for the place. It’s pretty unique.

The New “Hotter and Juicier” Big Mac

Published on August 13, 2019 by Michael Nusair4 Comments

Location: 2510 Hampshire Gate, Oakville
Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca.html

McDonald’s is making a big hullabaloo about their “remastered” classic burgers (the Big Mac, the Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and the Cheeseburger). This includes a promotion where you can get a Big Mac for three bucks, so I figured it was worth a shot.

The improvements, according to McDonald’s:

100 per cent Canadian beef patties now cooked in smaller batches for hotter and juicier beef

Storage changes for fresher and crisper produce

Onions added directly on the patties on the grill to intensify flavour

More of our legendary Mac Sauce applied on Big Macs

New bun recipes for warmer buns

I got a Big Mac, and… I don’t know. It’s a Big Mac? It tastes like a Big Mac? I’m sure if I were that guy who eats multiple Big Macs every day, it would have blown my mind with all the little differences. But it’s been a year or two since I’ve had one. It tasted exactly the same to me.

Actually, that’s not entirely true — it’s clearly saucier. The amount of sauce is kind of insane. It oozes out of the burger with every bite. It’s a mess.

Obviously the dry, mostly tasteless McDonald’s patties need a lot of help (and no, they are absolutely not juicier in any discernible way). But even still, this was overkill.

The only other change that stood out were the onions; you could tell just by looking at them that they had been put on the griddle. They had a bit of colour to them. But if that made any particular difference to the flavour, I certainly couldn’t tell.

Still, it wasn’t bad. I liked the Big Mac before, and I like it now — but I guess I prefer the old version, because the amount of sauce on the new one is bonkers.

Beyond Burger at Tim Hortons

Published on July 18, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 4100 Dixie Road, Mississauga
Website: https://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/index.php

The Beyond Burger at Tim Hortons is way better than it has any right to be. Is it particularly good? No, not really. Would I order it again? Absolutely not. But it’s perfectly acceptable. It’s not gross.

Maybe that’s a low bar. But Tim Hortons isn’t exactly known for having an appetizing lunch selection. And their last foray into the fake meat game — the Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich — featured an impressive emulation of actual meat, but was otherwise pretty lousy.

Beyond Meat has clearly been evolving their product since I tried the Beyond burger at A&W last summer. I found that one to be off-puttingly mushy. The texture of the burger I just had at Tim’s was much, much better.

If you compare it to a good quality burger, it’s pretty much garbage. But! It actually compares quite favourably to the frozen burgers that are served all over the city. If I had eaten it blind, that’s what I would have assumed it was. It’s impressive.

In fact, I think I might have liked this a bit better than that type of frozen burger; those ones sometimes have a gamy, off meat flavour that’s a bit off-putting. This one, on the other hand, has a generic meaty flavour that’s not unpleasant. Again, it’s not particularly good, but it’s not bad either. It’s fine.

They top it with cheese (which isn’t melted, of course), lettuce, tomato, ketchup, and mustard, which successfully covers up the patty’s lack of a beefy flavour. Between the assertive condiments and the impressively accurate cheap burger texture, you’d never know that you’re not eating a lousy (but real!) hamburger. I know that’s not exactly high praise, but I’m actually really impressed.

Beyond Sausage Egg and Cheese from Tim Hortons

Published on July 12, 2019 by Michael NusairLeave a comment

Location: 2960 South Sheridan Way, Oakville
Website: https://www.timhortons.com/ca/en/index.php

The fake meat gold rush continues; I think it’s safe to say that, before long, all of the fast food chains will have imitation meats from places like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods on their menus.

Tim Hortons is the latest, with three new breakfast sandwiches featuring sausage that looks and tastes like sausage — but isn’t.

I tried the Beyond Meat burger from A&W last summer, and I thought it vaguely approximated real meat, but wasn’t going to fool anyone.

The Beyond Sausage at Tim Hortons is much more convincing.

I got the Egg and Cheese, which features a Beyond Sausage patty, an omelette patty, and processed cheese on an English muffin.

The sausage certainly isn’t great, but it convincingly tastes like an actual sausage — a mediocre sausage, mind you, but if I hadn’t known it was fake meat, I wouldn’t have guessed. That’s impressive.

(Of course, emulating a lousy, ultra-processed sausage is much, much easier than emulating one that actually tastes good, but one step at a time, I guess?)

There was something about the spicing that I found vaguely unappealing, and the flavour was particularly aggressive, presumably to cover up the lack of a meaty flavour. But for the most part, it’s decent enough.

The texture is dead-on. Unlike the Beyond Meat burger I had at A&W, it’s not mushy at all. It’s a bit dry, and no one’s going to confuse it for a decent quality sausage, but the texture is basically identical to the type of mediocre sausage you’ll find at a place like Tim Hortons. I was surprised at how close it got.

Otherwise, the sandwich was typical Tim Hortons, which is to say it was pretty lousy — the cheese was barely melted, the omelette was rubbery, and the English muffin was dense and dry.