Do they still serve McRuis from time to time?

+1 for McDonalds in Japan. ^ Much better pickles than in the US.

Funny side note though, since "Ronald" is difficult for the Japanese to pronounce correctly his name is actually "Donald McDonald" here.

Malaysia is much nicer as well
 

Though I never eat at McDonalds state side here, I did go to them in Malaysia simply because I knew the meat to be halal (Muslim version of kosher)....the burger was better tasting, looked just like the picture on the ad, and the they had a washing station to wash your hands in the dining area.....hows that for cleanliness.....you wont find that here in the states, thats for sure.

Yes i agree , i have been in Sweden, Denmark , Finland, Norway and someother european countries and i have to say McDonald's quality is very good when compared to some asian countries.

Here in HKG Mc Do is quite good, too. Especially since they launched the quarter pounder here. And it is really cheap, too :-)

I really live much better without tasting Mc Donalds ...

They should call it McSodium. Even the most basic cheeseburger has HALF of the max sodium intake you should have in a day. In just the cheeseburger. Everything they sell is more heavily salted than more or less every other fast food vendor around. The food quality is also very poor. I'm at a loss as to why people continue to eat there.

I just saw a piece on TV last night about sit-down restaurants. Outback's full slab of ribs is incredibly dosed with sodium and calories. California Pizza Kitchen's grilled chicken salad has almost 2,000 calories. Pretty surprising when people often think of salads as being more healthy than pizza!

So McDonald's is not the only culprit.

Whether or not you eat at Micky Dees... I hope everyone has seen the movie Super Size Me It is classic! Somehow I don't think much has changed in the last 5 years since it was made.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/

Agree wholeheartedly.

It is a garbage export.

I cringe when I see them anywhere, especially in Asia. So out of place and grotesque. It saddens me to see people choosing this junk over their own (authentic) food!

Who in their right mind would eat this rubbish?
Do you really believe a hamburger with a prawn on it to be "Japanese"?
It's called a marketing ploy to appeal to Japanese tastes. They also serve spaghetti with some bizzarre western toppings, but that doesn't make it Japanese either.
There are plenty of authentic and inexpensive places to eat - but some people just want the familiar, I suppose?

Me :D^

What is it, then? (Besides "rubbish.") It may not be traditionally Japanese, but it's still something you would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.

Wirelessly posted (Nokia N97 / Palm TX: Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; Series60/5.0 NokiaN97-3/10.2.012; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1; en-us) AppleWebKit/525 (KHTML, like Gecko) WicKed/7.1.12344)

Good or bad.... I crave the stuff every now and then... :eek:

Me too. :)

Mmmm..... Sausage Biscuits!

Reading this thread is making me want to go to McD's right now...regular hamburger, small fry and a Dr. Pepper...yummmm.

Dr. Pepper...... I havent had one is over 20 years.... :eek:

(not sure if I would like one to be honest)

^

Here's the In-N-Out nutritional info if someone wants to compare with McD's...

I actually prefer Diet Dr (note: no period after the "Dr") Pepper.

And that makes the meal healthy. :D

Slightly off topic but I ate at the Sedona, AZ McDonalds this weekend which is noteworthy as being the only McDonalds with green arches. They also had a soft serve cone for $.50. IT was a great day for CMK10!

An ebi burger (which is made of prawns - it isn't a burger with a prawn on top of it) seems just as authentically Japanese to me as ebi gratin. It's a fine example of modern 'yoshoku' - as joejones says, it's not like you'll find it anywhere else.
I don't see how anyone can find pizza topped with nori or natto or any other of the bizarre combinations available in Japan to be comforting and familiar - those options are for travellers way more adventurous than I am, a lunchtime kaiseki-style menu is way less challenging!
Yoshoku is a very important part of Japanese cuisine and one's understanding of the food and culture suffers tremendously by ignoring it.
(Not perfect, but this article will familiarise you with the term if you're unaware of it)

As for the other foods I mentioned

The perhaps sad truth is that with the Alvalle gazpacho available from McDonalds, visitors do actually get a taste of what many Spaniards now think of as authentic Gazpacho Andaluz.
In two recent unrelated internet discussions I've seen fellow Spaniards recommend this exact brand to English speakers saying it was "just like their mother's" or "better than that served by many restaurants". These same people may not be aware that it's the brand served by MacDonalds... but I am.

And Quorn is a very popular food in the UK, but it would be completely natural for most visitors to remain completely unaware of its existence. A moot point now, as it isn't served by McD's anymore this is a genuine local food, designed for the demands of the local culture, that few tourists will get a chance to try.

ebi burger.... hmmmm ^

why the green arches...?

According to Wikipedia "The McDonald's in Sedona, Arizona is the only one in the world with teal arches. They are not yellow because the city thought they would mesh poorly with the surrounding red rocks. The first color McDonalds offered was teal which the city accepted."

A funny thing I've noticed about airport fastfood... relative scarcity of McDonald's?
 

Has anyone else noticed this too? See below.

I'm a flight attendant and I often don't have a lot of time to eat when I'm on duty, so that leaves fast food options as one of my primary forms of sustenance, unfortunately. I've noticed that Burger King and Wendy's have aggressively tried to corner the fast food burger market at many, if not most major airports... but the number one fast food chain in the USA, McDonald's, seems to only have a perfunctory presence at certain key airports, while often not having any at all, even at some of the busiest airports in the country!

Does anyone know why this is?

Or at least venture a guess? I've wondered this for years now why airport Burger Kings always seem to outnumber McD's even though obviously McDonald's outlets do outnumber any other fast food establishment many times over nationwide.

Here's an informal survey I've taken (mostly from experience and memory, so I'm not going to make any guarantees that it is 100% accurate - any feedback from your experience is appreciated):

Out of the 50 or so of the busiest airports in the US, the following (I'm pretty sure) do not have any McDonald's locations at all.

SEA
LAS
SLC
CLT
PHX
MCI
AUS
PDX
MIA
IAD
STL
BNA
SFO
HNL
OAK
RDU
TPA
SMF
MEM
CLE
MKE
RSW
HOU
SJC
CMH
MSY
FLL

That's 27 (over half!) of some of the busiest airports in America, with no McDonald's! :eek: Seems almost un-American, doesn't it? :D

So that leaves the following airports that i've confirmed DO have at least one McD's on premesis:

MSP
DEN
LAX
ORD
ATL (concourse E only)
SNA
IND
DFW
SAN
BWI
CVG
LGA (US Airways Terminal only)
EWR (Terminal C only)
JFK (Terminals 1, 4, 7 & 8)
PIT
IAH
BOS (Terminal B only)
SAT
MCO
DTW
PHL
DCA

:confused: :confused: :confused:

I have noticed this as well, mainly because 80+% of the meals I eat in airports are breakfast, and McDs has IMO the best BY FAR of the fast food chains. I have only eaten McDs at DEN, ORD, LAX, SAN, and DFW.

And welcome to Flyertalk!

Recently Subway passed McDonalds for the fast food title in the United States.

Over the years many McDonalds have left airports, either outbid by the competitors when their lease or whatever the deal is called was up for rebidding, or because they (airport) raised the price so much they didn't want to stay and a Carls Jr or Burger King came in. In some other cases, it's because a giant company takes over all the food service, and brings in one of their franchises or a franchise they own.

I think McDonalds looks at every location, and if they can't get the deal they need to make the profit they want, they won't bid or won't stay. I think airports, and in many areas highway rest stops, are areas they are getting out of.

I actually need a sausage & egg McMuffin right now...

No kidding. I buy them from the $ menu.

Come to think of it, most Asian airports I know have MC.D's, KFC, Burger King, yet no Subway... Interesting... :rolleyes:

Sounds about right, so it must not be limited to airports, then... It must be any locations other than "standalone" McDonald's franchises, you know, the mall-style ones where they have to pay rent to a commercial property manager as opposed to a normal McD's where the franchisee owns the property?

Come to think about it, fairly recently a McDonald's located in a high-rise office building's lobby/food court near where I used to live closed down. Its kinda too bad, cuz it was the closest one too my house.

The reason, I think, that this is so noticeable to me is without McD's around you really start to notice standards slipping. I mean, say what you will about McDonald's, but they've mastered the art of consistency. I've been to some airport Burger Kings for breakfast that have ranged from OK to downright unappetizing *cough*STL*cough*.

Thanks for the welcome! :) I've been a member for a while, but this is my first post. :)

Ditto! ^ :D

Those are the ones without the egg. That's how they get you. :mad:

Back when McDonalds was a usual stop for me it was Sausage and Egg Biscuits for breakfast, loved those things.

There's a book, pretty sure it's McDonalds Beyond that Arches from the 90's or 90's that talks about the history of McDonalds from the development of the shake machine (back when they used them) to breeding a potato just for them. It talks a lot about standardization. I am pretty sure it's available from some of the free book sites online, and still on Amazon. Back then the standardization was new and different, not sure it would hold the same impact now, but it is a great read for any McDonalds fans.

I'z gonna say ... to the best of my knowledge, ATL, ORD, and LAX are by far the busiest (not necessarily in that order), and all three have McDonald's. What'd be even more interesting than knowing how many airports do and don't have McD's would be knowing total $$ sales of McD's at airports versus other chains. Not, I admit, highly interesting, but I wonder if it qualifies as a "relative scarcity" of McDonald's.

It has actually evolved into a tradition for us to get an Egg McMuffin whenever travelling out of DEN during breakfast hours. Morning air travel is associated with McDonalds for us now. I believe Denver has one on every concourse, but not in the terminal building.

They used to have outlets in all of the major UK airports.

They have since been banned due to the fire risk I believe.

Most large airports have contracts with compannies that manage their concessions and you can only have a certain concession say McDonalds if they have an operating agreement with that company.
Here in CLE we have a issue. A few years ago BAA AirMall toook over
the concerssions management from Marriott Host. They have done a nice job adding many new concessions but we lost out Starbucks since they have no agreemeent with BAA. CLE people ask Marriott if they could keep the Starbucks and they said no. We had 3 of them and they were always busy. I wrote the airport director and BAA and asked how come BAA Airmall mananages the connections at BWI and I know their is a Starbucks in the Southwest gate area. I guess we can have a Starbucks at
CLE but would need a seperate contract and this would cost big bucks.

Seriously?

Interesting to see the list. I believe that there was a McDonalds at MCI a few years ago.

Far from "major", but BOI has a Mickey's