McRib Combo

                                 Since I forgot to take a picture, I drew an exploded view of my lunch.

The McRib sandwich is something of an anomaly. Each year, and you never know quite when, McDonald's opens some secret compartment in the back of the meat freezer and brings them out. It's a cult institution within a very much non-cult establishment. Most people either love the McRib or refuse to try it.

I have not been to a McDonald's in several months, and I can't remember the last time I went there for anything other than a quick coffee stop on a road trip. It's not that I don't eat fast food, it's just that the way McDonald's presents their food seems particularly manipulative, like they've discovered a massive quantity of ground beef at the bottom of the ocean and have to sell it all before it reaches its half-life and fossilizes. I'd rather that not happen in my large intestine.

The newest tactic in McDonalds' campaign is to sell not their burgers, but the idea that their burgers are good for you. The décor suggests a coffee shop, with tile walls, wood panels, and black surfaces. The pictures on the menu now have white backgrounds and green highlights. Though the food is the same, it looks healthier. Notice the difference in the drawing below.

                                                                                 It's practically a salad.

I get my McRib combo and sit down. I pull off the bun top and notice something I haven't before: the bun halves appear to have been manufactured separately and dyed to appear perfectly toasted. I replace it and bite into the sandwich.

The barbecue sauce has been flavored by committee; I can taste traces of its rough drafts, this one with a little too much high fructose corn syrup, this one with a little too much sodium benzoate, until finally, gentlemen, THIS is what the average American imagines barbecue sauce tastes like.

The patriotism doesn't end at the sauce. The boneless pork patty tastes like a hot dog and appears to have been shaped by the gears of Benjamin Franklin's own printing press. I pause to chew and I put the sandwich down on the paper covering the plastic tray. It is printed with a history of Thanksgiving as it relates to McDonald's. On the other side of the paper is nutrition information about the food available at McDonald's. I have to wait until I've already eaten my sandwich to learn more about it, as I don't want to set it down on the crumbs and stains of those who ate before me to turn the paper over. I find out that since this is a seasonal sandwich, the information is not included.

As I leave, I fill my drink cup halfway with orange Hi-C. I remember being 5 years old, laying on a mat on the floor of my house, throwing up the same thing I'm now drinking. That's the McRib combo in a nutshell: a not-unpleasant childhood memory of vomiting. The taste and memory linger unnaturally for hours afterward.

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