Sorry about the delay between posts. I have been travelling constantly for the last week (and sampling as many new items as I can along the way) I will also be pretty busy over the next 2 weeks, as I am back in Canada visiting family.
Consumed on - 14 September 2009
Price - 8CNY = $1.25USD
Location - Unknown Branch
Rating - 1/5
The Ham and Egg McPuff was a standard item at Chinese McDonald's from 2008-2011. It was sold in a breakfast combo, with a hash brown and coffee for 18CNY for the meal, or you could buy it throughout the rest of the day for 8CNY on its own. It was served in the same packaging as the pies, but the crust was a soft, warm, flaky puff, rather than hard, fried crust on the regular pies. I'm not exactly sure if they fried it for a very short time or if they just microwaved an already cooked pie, but from what I remember, it was pretty soggy. I assume that these are made to be sold primarily around breakfast, and then just left sitting in the pie warmer for the rest of the day, so when I had this as a snack around 5pm, the eggs had been cooked many hours (possibly even days) prior.
I remember that it was one of the worst McDonald's items I have ever sampled. The egg was cold, the ham was overpowering, using, fatty, low quality meat, and the puff pastry was flavourless. For how bad it was, I was shocked that every time I returned to China, it continued to be still on the menu, but as of late 2011, it has finally been discontinued, with the introduction of the spinach wraps. McDonald's in China usually does a pretty good job in uniquely spicing their items (like their buns or other toppings) to give their food a unique flavour every. But the egg in the puff was overly salty, and though they spiced it with pepper, it couldn't be saved. It seemed like they tried to emulate an omelette that was then baked into a puff pastry.
The current promo item at Chinese McD's is a Mushroom burger which I won't be able to sample. Coupons are available here. If anyone is willing to give it a try, feel free to give me an email and I can post your photos.