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| McDonald's Malaysia Prosperity Burger & Twister Fries |
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| The Prosperity Burger looks and awful lot like a McRib |
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| Dry, hard & stale fries, a great sight at midnight |
Consumed on - 15 December 2012
Location - KL Sentral, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Price - 14.60RM (upsized combo) = ~$4.75USD
Calories - Unknown
Lots more photos and the review, after the break.
A few weeks ago, upon returning from the middle east, we routed through KUL on the way back to Singapore, as this was the cheapest way to build our ticket, and we could spend a day shopping in KL, somewhere she had never been before. We had a VERY long day before arriving, as our flight from Muscat was at midnight, we checked out of the hotel, then we spent the day driving out into the desert, and then hiking through Wadi Shab, in central Oman. Flight at midnight, then a 5 hour stop in Dubai, before flying to Doha and connecting to the 8 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur. All in, we were out for about 36-40 hours, and by the time we reached KL at 10pm, we were pretty beat. I didn't actually want to have McDonald's the night we arrived, I wanted something a bit lighter, but our late arrival made us miss the snacks that are served in the Hilton lounge (being a Gold member, we were upgraded to a pretty nice suite with lounge access), so we grabbed what we could at McD's within KL Sentral, to hold us over until breakfast (which was actually pretty lacklustre, it made us miss middle eastern food, and the tranquillity of our previous 10 days).
Naturally, I went with a Prosperity Burger, and my GF had a standard Big Mac. The Prosperity Burger is similar to the Hong Kong McPepper, and usually makes it to Malaysia & Singapore once a year. Though, this was actually the first time I've been able to try it. Its a beef patty with a black pepper sauce, with its only 'healthy' quality being the couple of onion they throw on top. Thankfully they didn't do something stupid and fry/grill the onion.We upsized my combo so we could share. The Prosperity Burger came with the Twister Fries, and was also served with a "Prosperity McFizz", but as it was almost midnight, we opted against the sugar rush that would have been the huge upsized Sprite mixed with Orange Juice, and went with a Coke Light instead. The KL Sentral branch, being inside the KL Central train/metro/bus/taxi station, was doing pretty good business at 11:30pm. Not sure if that was because most of everything else was closed at the time, or just the popularity of McDonald's in Malaysia. Sadly, they seemed understaffed as there was rubbish piled up on pretty much every table, and the staff that was there seemed too busy taking/serving orders to go out and clean.
Personally, at 11:30pm, fast food in a train station, I wasn't expecting anything to be 'fresh' but when I opened my Prosperity Burger from its box, I discovered it to be perfectly hot, exactly as it should have been. I never really looked closely at the promo photos, but its oval shape and onion reminded me of the US favourite, McRib (which I've only been able to try once, when it wasn't being offered as a national special - Long Beach, California - 2010). The beef was thick, but probably not as thick as the recent Samurai Burger that I had in Malaysia a couple months back. They put more than the few cursory pieces of onion as the topping, as my burger had at least 1/4 an onion up there. The sauce defiently tasted like black pepper, and it had just the right amount. Enough that you could taste it in every bite, but not enough that it caused a problem, or felt like it would give you a heart attack after you finished. One thing I did notice was that the sauce had a slight sweetness too it. To my dismay, lots of sauces in South East Asia have sugar in them, but I don't remember this sweetness in the Hong Kong McPepper, so not sure if they use the exact same sauce or not. The McPepper made a return recently to HK, so maybe someone can comment on the sauce below.
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| Tired & dirty, but always hungry. |
Where the burger was a nice surprise to actually be served hot and fresh, the fries were the biggest let down of the night and exactly how I imagined fast food at midnight being. As I carried the tray to our table, I took one look at them and knew they were going to be terrible. It looked like they had been cooked many hours ago and left to sit. One bite verified my thinking, as they were rock hard and ice cold. The restaurant was busy, and there were empty boxes of Twister fries scattered around the tables and floor, so I don't know why these were so bad. They had some seasoning on them, but didn't taste like any kind of twisty fries I've had before, and they were too hard and cold to bother to keep eating to try and determine what the seasoning was. That, and even though I paid extra to upsize the combo, this was just the standard size Twister Fries, the same size I saw being served with regular size combos, not a terrible size in itself, but if you pay for upsize, you should receive more than the regular.
I stayed in Malaysia for 2 days after this review (and tried another couple new items), and was back there last weekend, but I didn't give McDonald's a second chance with these gross fries, they got their rating at first the bite.
Rating -
Prosperity Burger - 4/5
Twister Fries - 1/5
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| Glad they didn't run out of promo boxes |