McDonald's Canada

Introduction

Last week, I went to Montreal on a business trip. While I was there my employer was kind enough to grant me a per diem of $110 USD to spend on meals (roughly CAD150 at current exchange rates). Naturally, I chose to take advantage of this generous meal allowance by going to McDonald’s.

The Location

I found the closest thing to a flagship location, open 24/7 at 1 Rue Notre-Dame Oest (that’s 1 Notre-Dame Street West for us English speakers). That’s in the historic neighborhood of Old Montreal, less than a block away from the majestic Notre Dame cathedral.

The McDonald’s edifice is only slightly less majestic:

It occupies the first two floors of the Mussen building, which was originally constructed in 1905. It was built over the remains of a building from the mid-17th century had been torn down to make room for the widening of St Laurent Boulevard. Perhaps the most striking part of the Mussen building is the stylistic difference between the first two floors and those above. My initial assumption was that McDonald’s themselves added a limestone facade on their part of the building to make it look older and fancier than the brick of the upper floors¹. However based on historical photos it appears that the different materials and styles were part of the original design by architects MacVicar & Heriot. They also designed the nearby Caron building, as well as a few others that are a similar sort of mishmash.

The effect is particularly strange because the bottom half of the building matches it’s neighbor along Rue Notre-Dame Oest (to the left in the below picture), while the top half of the building matches its neighbor along St Laurent Blvd (to the right in the below picture)²

But enough about architecture, we’re here to talk about food!

Ordering The Food

This particular McDonalds boasts a somewhat concerning 1.5 star rating on Yelp. I didn’t look up any reviews until after I ate there, which is probably for the best.

Walking in, it doesn’t feel that different from a larger McD’s in the United States. It had about 8 touchscreen kiosks that let you place your order, as well as a few cash registers. One notable difference is that the touchscreen kiosks default to French, so the first part of my adventure was figuring out how to see the menu in a language that I could understand.

A few things jumped out when I opened the menu:

First, in traditional McDonald’s fashion, the ice cream machine was broken.

Second, they had a fish and chips menu.

Third, they had some fancy sounding burgers

Fourth, they distinguish between the “chicken menu” and the “seriously chicken menu”. Sadly, I wasn’t able to figure out what made one of the chicken menus more serious than the other.

And last but not least (although not visible above due to my bad camera work) they had a poutine menu. This definitely intrigued me the most. I had eaten poutine a few days earlier and it was a bit of a fiasco³. The idea of being able to order a poutine via touchscreen as opposed to verbally definitely appealed to me. I didn’t love the previous poutine I had ordered (it seemed like a waste of good french fries). However, ordering off this menu seemed worth it so that I could experience the McDonald’s take on Canada’s national dish.

This McDonald’s boasted not one but three forms of poutine on the menu:

• Regular
• Spicy Buffalo (crispy)
• Spicy Buffalo (grilled)

Surprisingly, the regular poutine had more calories than either of the chicken versions. Maybe the portion sizes are different?

If you’ve seen the movie Pulp Fiction, you may remember a scene where John Travolta’s character describes some of the little differences he noticed when he traveled internationally. One of the differences he pointed out was that in Paris a Quarter Pounder with Cheese is called a Royale With Cheese. Sadly, that’s not the case in Quebec where it is called a Quart de Livre avec Fromage. Translated literally, that just means “¼ pound with cheese”.

In my haste to order, I didn’t take a picture of the dessert menu. Probably the most exciting thing on it was the Reese’s Pieces McFlurry. Since I doubted it could live up to the discontinued-in-America Reese’s McFlurry, I gave it a pass and decided to order an apple pie. American McDonald’s had recently generated a lot of uproar by changing their apple pie recipe, so I wanted to see which version was being served in Canada.

For my entree, I ordered the fish and chips as well as the spicy buffalo crispy poutine.

Getting the food

The restaurant was relatively busy and there was a moderate wait. Both the poutine and the fish and chips came in folded up cardboard boxes. Once I got my food, I went to the larger seating area upstairs. When I got my drink cup, I was able to fill it up at a self-serve soda fountain

THE FOOD

Fish and chips

This was my first time getting any sort of fish at McDonald’s, and I was pleasantly surprised with the two pieces of fish that I received. Oftentimes when ordering fish and chips, the fish is overbattered or overfried, but my McDonald’s fish had a perfect amount of batter to give the pieces a nice crispy exterior. The fish itself had a decent texture and didn’t taste overly fishy.

The fish was served on a bed of French fries, and unfortunately some of the fries did have a weird fishy aftertaste. The salting of the fries was a bit inconsistent throughout the batch. While eating them, I also noticed that the Canadian ketchup was a bit less salty and more watery than I was used to. I think the American ketchup is a bit excessive, so this was actually a welcome change.

Spicy Buffalo Poutine

Full disclosure: This was my second experience with poutine. When I had it previously, I wasn’t a big fan of the dish. To me, it’s proof that sometimes with food the whole isn’t going to be greater than the sum of its parts. When I had it before, the naturally delicious taste and seasoning of the fries was overwhelmed by the gravy.

The McDonald’s poutine wasn’t quite as drenched with gravy as other poutines I’ve seen, but I thought it still detracted from the flavor.

The poutine consisted of:

• A chicken tender cut into half a dozen pieces: It looks like the same one that they use in Canada for their chicken BLTs. It’s a bit more “chicken tender” shaped than the patty of a McChicken, but much flatter and more patty-like than their chicken tenders. The chicken had decent flavor

• Spicy buffalo sauce: This actually had a lot more kick than I expected. A lot of “spicy” fast food ends up being weak, but I thought this lived up to the name.

• Gravy: There wasn’t very much and it was overwhelmed by the spicy buffalo sauce

• Chopped scallions: They were just kind of there, didn’t really add or detract anything

• Cheese curds: The curds were chewier and tougher than I’d prefer. They didn’t have a lot of flavor

• French fries: Fries became soggy and rubbery. The inherently delicious fry flavor was overwhelmed by the other ingredients

I would not recommend the buffalo chicken poutine.

Apple pie

The McDonald’s apple pie on the US menu has gone through a number of revisions. The consensus has been that the pie has gradually become healthier at the expense of flavor. Long ago, they switching from frying to baking the pies. More recently, they reduced the amount of cinnamon and sugar used. Instead of being a mostly-solid piece of dough with a few slits cut into it, the top of the pie became a mostly open lattice

Purists will be happy to know that, despite being baked, the Canadian Apple pie is more similar to the old American recipe. The top is mostly solid and heavily sprinkled with cinnamon. The pieces of apple in side are cut a little bit smaller than the new American version, and there’s more of the sweet sauce. The pies are best when warm, but unfortunately mine had cooled down a bit by the time I got to it. Nevertheless, it was still a delicious way to end the meal.

Miscellaneous

My Diet Coke wasn’t very good. It was flat and seemed to have less flavor than usual. I’m not sure if this was a problem with this particular soda fountain or if perhaps Canadian Diet Coke uses a different recipe.

Ambiance

i cant believe this exists

books link

similar style building

canada arcs

Mussen description, slightly shitting on it

MacVicar on Montreal council of architects in 1905