FOOD FRIDAY: The Chicken Big Mac® is an attack of the blahs
Indignity Vol. 4, No. 192
REVIEW DEP’T.
McDonald's New Special Delivers Twice the Flavorlessness
IN THE INTEREST of Science, I went to McDonalds the other day to sample the new Chicken Big Mac®, and I am gonna make this quick, don’t waste your money.
My Chicken Big Mac® meal set me back around nine bucks, before tip, and yes, I tip at McDonald’s, especially the one near my house. Anybody who eats McDonald’s knows there are good ones and bad ones, and this is a good one. The manager saw me standing at the counter because I wanted to order with my mouth and not on the ordering kiosk, but they very smoothly and politely directed me over to one of the stupid kiosks, and proceeded to allow me to recite my order while they finger-fucked the touchscreen. Service beyond self-service!
A typical Big Mac® is based on two of the thin and thoroughly cooked McDonald’s hamburger patties, which happens to be the backbone of my go-to order at McDonald’s; the McDouble® (a double cheeseburger with only one slice of cheese), at “$1 $2 $3 Dollar Menu*” purchase price of around four dollars if you order two.
*Prices and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal.
My McDouble® order is always two, no cheese, because I do not particularly enjoy the McDonald’s orange cheese product in this configuration. For example, I think the McCheese goes great on a Filet-O-Fish® (no tartar sauce), and I think the hamburger patties go very well with the teensy-weensy chopped onions, pickles, and ketchup, but the cheese sorta muffles the experience for me. So!
The Chicken Big Mac® is a Big Mac® with two breaded fried chicken patties taking the place of the hamburger, and no onions. My Chicken Big Mac tasted like Nothing, with a generous slather of the mayo-ketchup-y Big Mac Sauce, along with shredded lettuce, a slice of the salty McDonalds orange cheese, and pickles served within a McDonald’s signature tripartite sesame seed bun. I even pulled out one of the chicken patties and consumed a portion of it separately to see if it had any sorta taste, and it was a featureless taste desert.
I wanted to perform a fair evaluation, so I didn’t wanna poison my food-mind with the knowledge before dining if the Chicken Big Mac® is platformed upon the McChicken® “juicy chicken patty,” a strongly-peppered pieces-parts patty that has always made me feel ill afterwards (fool me once, shame on you, fool me four times, shame on McMe), or if it was maybe a McCrispy™ “crispy chicken fillet.” After I consumed the sandwich, along with the highlight of my luncheon, freshly prepared McDonald’s fries, I asked the McManager about the chicken in the Chicken Big Mac®, and they told me it was the same as the Chicken McNuggets®, which, yeah, tastes like oil-fried nothing plus whichever dipping sauce you get, urfh!
So the Chicken Big Mac® “patty” is a couple-few flattened-out McNugs, only they aren’t coming at you right outta the fryer, so they don’t even have the hot fry-oil flavor aspect, bleah!
Plus! I don’t know about you, but I always think, when I am considering red meat alternatives, “get the chicken, it’s healthy, slimming!” The Chicken Big Mac® is 700 calories compared to 590 for the Big Mac®.
Chicken Big Mac®: Bland, boring, hella calories, did not enjoy, would not recommend, would not order again.
DINNER AND A MOVIE DEP’T.
Popebox Derby
Conclave (2024)
Directed by Edward Berger
CONCLAVE IS SOMEHOW a throwback movie, recalling an era of unobjectionable, adult-serious, bankable box-office performers based on airport paperbacks like The Pelican Brief, The Firm, and Primal Fear. You get a script based on a solid best-seller, hire a coupla movie stars, and produce a mid-budget something that will deliver a dependable return and maybe even get an Oscar nomination.
In this case, we have Ralph Fiennes, doing a lot with a little, I mean, this is a movie about a bunch of guys sitting around deciding who is gonna be the next Pope of the Roman Catholic empire. His character, Lawrence, is in serious grief, because he liked the Dead Pope—I sat through the credits, that’s the actual credit actor Bruno Novelli has, Dead Pope—and also, Lawrence is completely stressed out, displaying palpable mental anguish as the Cardinal (almost a Pope) who is the manager of the entire Pope-election process, the CONCLAVE, which, I checked my watch, it took about nine minutes until a character said the title of the movie, and there’s def a drinking game here. Conclave!
It’s not completely fair to say Fiennes, who is in maybe a record-breaking amount of compelling closeups, is working with “a little” in this picture though, it’s a lotta yakking, but it’s set in the trappings of the Roman Catholic C-suite life, where there are people cooking and cleaning for these guys, helping them put on their Cardinal drag, the robes, jewels, funny hats, the whole thing, they get waited on hand and foot in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, with the stained glass and frescoes and murals and marble slabs and marble statues and burning stuff in adherence to ancient procedures and rituals and in Italy. There’s even a quick, catty look at historic Pope wardrobe.
If you even think you might want to screen this, do so right away because it has an ending that can be super-easily spoilered. Also, this is the kind of movie best viewed in a theater. The budget is all up there on the big screen, the visuals do a tremendous amount of lifting to keep you engaged with all these wanna-be Popes scheming, schmoozing, and politicking themselves into Popedom or the Papacy or whatever it’s called. The settings and the cinematography are a mini museum tour, and great work is done with sound, and especially lighting, in the cavernous halls of Pope-power. Stanley Tucci shows up and kinda pulls you out of the movie because hey, it’s the Tooch, he’s everywhere, but things move along and the feeling goes away and you are entertained by a solid handful of actors the likes of Oscar nominee John Lithgow, somehow never Oscar-nominated Isabella Rossellini, and Lucian Msamati from the TV show Gangs of London, who is great because there’s no predicting if he’s gonna be good or evil, like the Pope.
SPOILER ALERT: Major HIPAA violation.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, October 31, 2024
★★ The sight of russet leaves out the window combined with the sensation of wearing shorts to produce a sense of incongruity bordering on dissociation. The humid, gusty warmth was not summery but not any other properly identifiable thing either. A good-sized leaf flapped a little as it hung stuck by the grille ornament of a Cadillac. A misty spray of water floated down from construction scaffolding at the top of a building. A woman walked by the bakery in a white dress, carrying a floppy white sun hat with a brim so large as to make it impossible to judge whether it was meant to be sincere or a spoof. The part of the sky through the trees was a deep blue from some other kind of autumn day; southward, the clouds scattered the light into glare that required a raised hand to fend it off at the crosswalks. The sun went down on an empty street and full candy bowls, but the deeper the twilight grew, the more costumed supplicants appeared.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast.
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from Benson Woman's Club Cook Book, Containing Over Four Hundred Of Our Own And Our Friends' Choice Recipes, collected and compiled by Benson Woman's Club, published in 1915, now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.
EGG PIMENTO.
Grind 1 can of pimentoes in food chopper, also 6 slices of bacon which have been fried brown. Chop fine 6 hard boiled eggs and mix with other ingredients. Season with salt, pepper, sugar and vinegar. Ground pickle may be used for flavoring instead of the vinegar if desired.
—Mrs. G. W. Sowards.
If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net.
MARKETING DEP'T.
We are down to the last SEVEN copies of the second printing of 19 Folktales, still available for gift-giving and personal perusal! The nights are getting chilly and longer, but the stories are each concise enough to read before your bedtime tea cools off.
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