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There’s an old adage which goes something like ‘going to McDonald’s for a salad is like going to brunch for a sandwich’, but that may be about to change as the famous franchise has unleashed its revitalised green menu.
The quick service brand has spent the last few months behind closed doors perfecting its new creations, and is now fresh and ready for consumption across the region.
I’m one of those willing to put my hands up and admit that the idea of salad at ‘Maccies’ would usually be alien to me, but after going on a crash diet over summer and shedding nearly three stone, I’m well initiated into the art of eating like a rabbit these days.
After putting the new offerings to the test, I can safely say that the aforementioned line of thinking will be a thing of the past as they were packed with fresh, crunchy and tasty goodness.
First up was the Quinoa Fattoush, which offers a traditional taste from Arabia with a sprinkling of superfood quinoa. This gem of a grain is packed with antioxidants that fight diseases, healthy proteins and provides all the ‘good’ nutrients of bread and pasta without any of the gluten or stodgy carbohydrates.
As soon as I tasted this little marvel, I felt the goodness flowing through me, and for every forkful of crispy romaine lettuce, diced cucumbers, tomatoes and onions I shovelled more of the grains on top to get my fill. Complemented by a light sprinkling of Fattoush chips and zesty dressing, this was a tasty way to start.
Next up was the Feta Garden salad, which also contains quinoa seeds, but this time mixed in with feta cheese cubes, baby spinach, corn, Rocca, yellow capsicum, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, topped off with a mustard vinaigrette dressing.
This medley of flavours, a mixture of sweet and bitter, worked perfectly and there was just the right amount of ingredients in each to stop one becoming overpowering. If ever there was a seal of approval, I had to ask for it to be taken away from me so I could leave room for more!
And, more there was, with the best saved until last – the old favourite, the Chicken Caesar. This is my usual salad of choice, but seeing the size and variation in the McDonald’s portion really took me by surprise, in a good way.
The combination of the crunchy romaine lettuce, tender grilled halal chicken strips, crispy bread croutons, shredded parmesan cheese and the ever-tasty dressing blew me away with its assault of tastes and textures.
This was one pot I did finish off right until the last leaf.
Accompanying me was McDonald’s Bahrain head-of-marketing Dunya Mudara, who explained about the reasoning behind the refreshing alternative to the traditional and still popular burger. She said: “It’s a completely new initiative and facelift for the salad platform. Earlier, we had typical salads that weren’t too exciting. We knew there was a market there but we weren’t getting through like we knew we could.
“So across the GCC we really concentrated and decided how to improve our salads. We are changing the look of our menus, and these are a vital part of that. We wanted to make the salads regional, hence the feta cheese and quinoa Fattoush which are hugely popular in the Levant region.
“Our packaging has completely changed, with a colour-coded sleeve to show you exactly what you’re getting and to give it a fresh garden feel. The new tub makes it much easier to hold and eat ‘on the go’ than our old packaging, and the portion sizes are twice what they used to be, and with premium, quality ingredients.”
She certainly isn’t wrong, and with the freshly-renovated outlet on Exhibitions Avenue in Hoora just a couple of minutes’ walk from the GulfWeekly office, salad may well be replacing curry on the menu for our fabled Monday lunches. At BD2 for a large tasty tub, the value is tremendous.
McDonald’s Corp will offer its first-ever 100 per cent organic beef hamburger for a limited time in Europe, as a growing number of global diners demand food that is more natural and less processed.
McDonald’s will offer ‘McB’ burgers, made with organic beef sourced from organic farms in Germany and Austria, until November 18, to test the demand.
The move from the world’s biggest restaurant chain by revenue comes as it is revamping food-sourcing practices as part of new chief executive Steve Easterbrook’s effort to transform McDonald’s into a ‘modern, progressive burger company’.
Germans, known for their love of sausages, are eating less meat and more vegetarian food as concerns grow about health, animal welfare and the environmental cost of livestock farming. In Germany, beef certified as ‘organic’ must come from cattle that eat organically-grown feed and graze on pasture where synthetic chemical fertilisers and pesticides are not used.
“We have made a great effort to secure sufficient quantities of meat which satisfies the organic requirements and our own quality claims,” said Holger Beeck, chief executive of McDonald’s Germany.
McDonald’s has tweaked menus and worked to improve service and the company’s quarterly sales at established restaurants in Germany recently grew for the first time since the middle of 2012.
A McDonald’s HQ spokeswoman declined to say whether the company would roll out the burger to other markets. McDonald’s US said in March that within two years, it would stop buying meat from chickens raised with antibiotics vital to human health.
That move was cheered by public health and consumer advocates, who are concerned that overuse of antibiotics in meat production is contributing to rising numbers of life-threatening human infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria dubbed ‘superbugs’.
Earlier this month, McDonald’s also stated that its 16,000 US and Canadian restaurants would switch to cage-free eggs by 2025.
