Anyone whose soul is in Singapore would have known about McDonald’s new offerings with a local twist. The headline item of the line of products?
Salted Egg Burger.
When McDonald’s introduced it in the past Thursday, the burger was sold out by the end of Friday, up till Saturday. I only managed to get to taste the burger for the 2nd time on Sunday instead.
The salted egg craze seemed to have started some time late last year, when custard-oozing buns (流沙包) became popular again in Taiwan, most notably with the buns shaped like a cartoon character, and then one has to use a pointy chopstick to pierce one of its nostrils to get the custard ooze out like snot. Similar versions included poking that poor fella at its rear end.
The craze later developed into salted egg custard – everything. Breadtalk has salted egg croissant, which Starbucks is also now offering. Toastbox now has Golden Lava French Toast, which, essentially contains salted egg. Even at iLight Festival last March, the food carnival had a kiosk that served fries and chicken skin drizzled with salted egg sauce.
Fried. Chicken. Skin.
Goes to show the lengths people go to milk the fad.
This time around, McDonald’s introducing the Salted Egg Burger with a range of complementary products. The biggest side kick (which happens to be the best surprise) is the Twister Fries (to be shaken with the Salt and Pepper Crab powder). Yes, it combines the all-time favourite that is twister fries and twisted it with a similarly tangy, salty and spicy condiment, together with the favourite activity of shaking them all up. The fries definitely satisfies all cravings for giam-giam food.
Others included Banana Pie, recycled from a campaign last year, and Spicy McNuggets, which was recycled directly from the Angry Birds campaign that seemed very short-lived. The only other product that is new is the Gula Melaka McFlurry. It combines the favourite that is McFlurry and added it with a local twist. It feels like eating chendol, but with creamy texture and crunchy delights (the bits are supposed to be Layer Cake a.k.a Kueh Lapis, but I thought it tasted more like gingerbread).
As for the burger itself, it came with my favourite McSpicy-chicken-minus-the-spicy fillet, topped with salted egg sauce itself. The fillet itself was marinated, but the salted egg taste was still rich enough to complement the fried chicken. In my 2nd tasting of the burger, the handler only poured the sauce on one half of the fillet, which was good, because I got to enjoy the fillet on its own, and the other half had double the salted egg flavour.
Almost all of the packaging for the current range of products come with localised terms to express the local flavour. The burger is said to be ‘Zhng-ed’ and the Banana Pie is “Bo-Jio”. It sounds a bit corny, but hey, the local Singaporean culture is corny.
It seems a tad late for McDonald’s to be hopping on to the salted egg bandwagon now, but eh… They waited till the truffle-everything craze was about to subside before they introduced their truffle fries (which indeed ended that season of fad).
Therefore, it remains to be seen if McDonald’s will also end this simi-sai-also-salted-egg fad, once and for all.
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