McRib

This basically started out as a dare. I dared my wife to eat one. She dared me to do the same. I latched onto the idea as content. And now here we are.

My family's relationship with McDonald's is complicated. Back in yon olden times a clan of my fore-bearers massacred a significant number of their kin and then intermingled with several captive survivors. Now that they're serving burgers, about the only thing I can bring myself to order there is drinks. Oh, that's got nothing to do with a sordid family past; it's mainly because their food is literal trash.

I do not like MAC D's food. Even as cheap as most of it is, I still feel like it's overpriced. Making their sandwiches taste like anything usually requires them to be doctored after I've bought them, at which point I may as well have just made myself a surprisingly uninteresting sandwich and saved a dollar or two. But the McRib, with its corporately advertised facade of exclusivity, intrigues me. I have never tried it before, because nothing else on the menu actually tastes good so why would this be different, but there was some perverse little inkling in the deepest, darkest corner of my soul that insisted I had to taste this thing. To know.

To understand.

Because as we learn from Sun Tzu and Ender Wiggin, the first step toward defeating your enemy is to understand them. And apparently everyone who eats at this place is my enemy, or something. So we went out and bought ourselves a couple of drinks and a McRib at MakkyDon's, my wife and I. One sandwich to split, of course. Pictured below you can see said sandwich flanked by our actual dinner from Wendy's, the only truly national burger chain worth eating at. Tonight's fare consists of the classic Baconator, a surprisingly robust blend of properly sauced cheeseburger and crisp applewood bacon, and the limited-time Bourbon Bacon Cheeseburger, which presents an enticing blend of battered onion ring and delectable bourbon sauce with the signature applewood bacon atop the only acceptable ground beef you can get at a national burger chain. Both excellent sandwiches taken individually command a price premium over MacDorgal's entire menu, but with a good coupon both can be had together for about the same price as two of these McRibs.

Now, on to the focus of today's show. From a component standpoint the McRib is extremely simple. A basic white bun wrapped around the supposed rib meat drenched in barbecue sauce and embellished with two unassuming pickles*. At first glance I have several concerns already. The meat, despite a die-stamp machine somewhere, doesn't actually look to be a cut of rib meat at all. At best it's a flank steak cut into a jagged rectangle, at worst it's their standard ground "beef" cut to the same profile. The sauce itself smells innocuous; primarily vinegar in its notes, but simple bbq sauces frequently expend no additional effort beyond that. But with the bun pulled back there is worryingly little sauce, especially given the amount of natural juices usually present in MicDiddy's meat. Which is to say, none.

The first bite of this sandwich presents an unusual experience. The "rib" itself is not, in fact, just their usual ground beef. But it does appear to be reconstituted in some fashion, possibly meaning that this is in fact rib meat that was cooked and seasoned at a plant somewhere, shredded, and then re-bound and die-cut into these patties, which were subsequently frozen and shipped. Presumably it was then microwaved in this very franchise building, kissed against a grill for appearance, and lightly dusted with sauce. The end result is a patty that is predictably dry and tasteless, and then has a consistency somewhat in line with a mouse-pad.

What's perhaps more surprising is that the sauce, a simple barbecue sauce, despite all of its zingy vinegar scent tastes of essentially nothing. The thinness of the patty paired with the weakness of the sauce means that in the mouth the primary flavor profiles of the sandwich are pretty much all absorbed by the bread, rendering the taste down to sawdust to compliment the rubbery mouth-feel. The precious few bites blessed by a pickle fare little better; there is more flavor, undoubtedly, but it's the flavor of an abysmally produced pickle, mouth-puckeringly disappointing. The expression associated with consumption of this sandwich can be most adequately described as confusion.

Which is apt, given the sheer underwhelmingness of the product. We had expected bad; what we got was simply bland, which is somehow even worse. At least bad food tastes like something. The McRib has been surgically neutered of all flavor in an attempt to appeal to the widest possible audience of eaters, thereby ensuring that it will not offend anyone. But simply put it cannot possibly please anyone either. It is a sandwich rendered inedible by the extremity of its mediocrity. In an attempt to resuscitate the loosely arranged lattice of carbon molecules masquerading as food I went to the fridge and pulled out my own barbecue sauce.

And not the good stuff, either. The most generic Kraft sauce you can buy at likely any grocery store in the country. This is not a high quality sauce, but I happen to know it has more flavor than my desk, and so I proceeded in the hope that any actual flavor would render MarcDaddle's algorithmically-produced sandwich palatable. 

Alas, the issues run too deep. Even with a much saucier texture and a much stronger flavor (said flavor being roughly equivalent to drinking barbecue sauce straight, but believe me, it's better than nothing), the rubbery texture of the meat prevented the experience from being enjoyable. All together this has done nothing to help me understand the people who eat at MercDergle's. Simply put I cannot fathom why anyone would choose to eat this, or anything else on their menu, when literally any other option exists. That is unless the thing I am meant to understand is that the people who do choose this are all as interesting as wet newspaper with all the depth of white bread. In which case message received.

The actual conclusion then is that the Bourbon Bacon Cheeseburger from Wendy's is simply outstanding and should become a regular part of their menu. The McRib, on the other hand, is as offensively inoffensive as other Mork Draggle food and should be hurled into a volcano along with the rest of their vapid menu.

Except the drinks.

*ADDENDUM: A solid week after the experience chronicled above we confirmed that the McRib is, in fact, supposed to have onions on it. While this likely would not have changed the outcome much, if at all, the added texture would have been appreciated if nothing else. However, this review will not be updated to reflect the advertised form of the sandwich. Take this how you want; lazy journalism, an indictment of McDonald's run-to-run order fulfillment accuracy, or a severe lack of confidence that a few strips of mediocre onion would make anything better.

In essence, all three are true.