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| Onions + Peppers, usually a combo made in heaven. |
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| A pre-blog bite photo. |
Consumed on 2 May 2011
Location - McDonald's Middle Road, Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands
Price - $1.99 for the Onion Cheddar + $0.50 Jalapeño Sauce add on
Calories - ~450kcal
Back in 2011, I was on the tail end of a pretty crazy trip. Saipan was my last stop on a trip that had brought me from Korea, to Shanghai, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Guam, The Marshall Islands, back to Guam, then onto Saipan before flying directly back to Seoul. I only stayed in Saipan for about 36 hours, but I had met up with a great Couchsurfing couple who drove me pretty much everywhere on the island and showed me everything they could in the short time that I was there. Though this was back in the pre-McDonald's Around the World days, I still wanted to check to see if Saipan had anything interesting on offer, so they stopped into one of the few remaining branches. Saipan, being a US territory like Guam, (well, actually its in a commonwealth , usually just has the standard US offering of McDonald's items. Sometimes they get the same promo items as Hawaii, so you can often find a Taro Pie or Haupia Pie now and then, but when I stopped in, the only interesting thing I saw was the US-wide Onion Cheddar/Jalapeño Cheddar McChicken Burgers for $1.99. I wasn't particularly interested in having two separate McChicken sandwiches, so instead I ordered the Onion Cheddar, and the Jalapeño Sauce as an extra topping for an additional $0.50. I believe only the Jalapeño sauce was available as an add-on to any burger, but the grilled onions that were on the Onion Cheddar weren't, so that's why I ordered it that way.
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| Not the exact packaging I had, but close enough - From Brandeating.com |
The burger wasn't available with any promotional packaging, and I guess that's because Saipan is so far away from the mainland, mine was just served in the standard McChicken wrapper, though as you can see from the photo above, the rest of the US had promo packaging. As awesome as the burger sounds (Onions and Peppers, who wouldn't love it?!), I was actually disappointed with the Jalapeño sauce, and I felt that it ruined what would have been a very decent Onion Cheddar burger. I love spicy food, but the sauce, though it had large pieces of Jalapeño was hardly spicy, it was pickled, and similar to peppers you would put on a hot dog was barely spicy enough to taste. The tangyness of the sauce hid what were actually pretty decent grilled onions (though the were cold). The cheddar cheese, whilst still processed, was a noticeable improvement over the standard orange cheese, though it couldn't compare to the Cheddar Deluxe that I had in London during the Olympics.
Also, the price point could not be beaten, with a semi-premium BLT McChicken nearly $5 here in Singapore, the $1.99 price, was very good. These things were an almost-too-cheap $0.99 - $1.29USD (depending on the market) back in the mainland, so when you factor in the distance Saipan is from, well, anything that isn't Guam, it was very affordable.
Follow the link here for a couple better photos.
Rating - 3/5