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| Still no promo boxes...disappointing. |
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| Double on the left, (My) Single on the right |
Consumed on - 09 April 2013
Location - Chinatown Point, New Bridge Road, Singapore
Price - Single Patty Combo - $5.00SGD ($4.00USD). Double Patty Combo - $6.95SGD
Calories - Single ~325kcal. Double ~435kcal
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| McDonald's Singapore Thousand Island Filet o Fish Receipt |
On 7 April, my wife was still back in Seoul, and I was bored so I walked from our flat to Nex Mall. As I was killing my afternoon window shopping, I noticed their McDonald's branch promoting the Thousand Island Filet-o-Fish, and I nearly had a heart attack as a big hand written "Sold Out" sticker was placed on the poster. I had heard rumours that some SG McDonald's branches are test branches for special items, and since the rest of Singapore had recently launched the Tangy Sesame Filet-o-Fish, I thought that maybe the Nex Mall was serving a test item that I missed out on. On the way to work Monday I checked out the Chinatown point branch and still saw no mention of it, so I sent a message to McDonald's Singapore's Facebook page. They only got back to me on Tuesday, saying that it is now available in all branches, so that is what I forced my colleague to have lunch that afternoon. I'm not sure why the promotion was so heavy for the Tangy Sesame (2 weeks of heavy promotion), but this Thousand Island variant only received a menu poster, and a single Facebook link 4 days after it's launch.
I was hungry a little earlier than usual, so we walked over to the branch around 1pm (I like to eat lunch around 2:30) and joined the somewhat long queue. I've had pretty good experiences at this branch before, and this lunchtime rush was the longest I've ever encountered there. The branch doesn't have all that many tables, and though it seemed that most people had already finished their meal, no one seemed interested in leaving their seat to let new diners sit down. As we were queuing to order, an old 80+ year old woman was carrying her tray around for a few minutes looking for a place to eat and none of the students using the booths to study, nor the already finished eating office workers on their lunch hour felt like giving the old woman a seat, so she gave up had to go ask for her food to be taken away. We relegated to having our meal as a takeaway and brought it back to our office.
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| McDonald's Singapore Chinatown Point Menu |
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| Both the double, and single patty version |
My feelings on the price were the same as the Tangy Sesame variant, that I thought it was a little crazy that they felt they could charge an extra $1.95 for the extra patty, when you can get a entire McDouble or a McChicken sandwich for $2. My co-worker wasn't so bothered by the price, and when he said he was going to order a double and I suggested he get a McDouble or McChicken for the extra $2, he just shrugged this shoulders and ordered the double without hesitation...
I felt that this Filet-o-Fish variant had the exact same problem as the Tangy Sesame, the sauce was just too weak. Now, I've actually had some comments on the Tangy Sesame saying that they didn't agree with my opinion, and they felt the sauce was more flavourful than I made it sound, but sadly this sauce was even weaker and more tasteless than the first one. I was able to eat my burger before my colleague could start his (as he got a phone call), and I made no mention to the flavour whatsoever to him before he started. He took two bites into his burger, and he asked me "I can't taste the Thousand Island".
It's possible that the Chinatown branch is being cheap with the sauce, but both times it seemed that the burgers had enough sauce that I should be able to taste something more powerful than I did. The people creating these burgers should check out Hong Kong's recent McCurry if they want to see how a sauce could be done properly. I'll be having the new Black Pepper Flamer today, so I hope that is a better effort than these last two.
Rating - 1.5/5