Ham Patty Burger - Taipei, Taiwan - April 2013

Finally reunited with my camera!  No more terrible phone camera shots for the time being. 

Even the website makes it look simple.

Consumed on 12 April 2013

Location - McDonald's Nanjing East Road MRT Station, Taipei, Taiwan

Combo Price - 59NTD = $2.00USD

Calories - ~280kcal

Did you know all Taiwanese receipts have a number at the top, and there is a lottery based on the numbers. They have charity boxes which you can drop you receipts into in hope that the charity will win the lottery and collect the money.

Our full breakfast that morning.

The McDonald's Ham Patty Burger was the 2nd sandwich my wife and I had for breakfast in Taiwan that April morning.  The first burger I sampled that morning was the Egg Burger with Vegetables, and similar to the Egg Burger, this burger also used the standard McDonald's Hamburger buns, rather than the expected McMuffin buns that are served on most breakfast sandwiches.  McDonald's Taiwan sells one more 'burger' variant, the "Egg Burger with Bacon", which is the same burger as the one "with Vegetables" that I had, (including the slice ham, which they call bacon), but does not come with tomato or lettuce, and is $10NT cheaper ($0.30USD) than the veggie variant. I was hoping that Taiwan had some type of soup for breakfast like Hong Kong, or something a little out of the box, but these were the most interesting I could find.

 

Just from the name, this burger seems pretty simple, and it was.  All that it was was the bun, a ham patty, mustard and cheese.  What made this simple sandwich stand out for me was first, the price, at only $2 USD for the entire combo, it was a great value, and the 'ham patty' was not the typical McDonald's sausage patty.  This slice of meat was much more 'Chinese' than I expected it to be. If you've ever had Chinese sausage you'll know what I mean, it was tougher than a regular sausage and had that slightly sweet flavour.  It was something which was totally different than what I was expecting.

My two breakfast burger wrappers side by side.

 

 Not much else to say about this, there was cheese, and there was mustard, neither of which were special.  I was glad there wasn't any ketchup on this, and I will admit the mustard was a nice combination with the chewy Chinese-style sausage.  This would be a perfect breakfast if you wanted something a little greasy, but not greasy enough to make you feel sick. Though, if you are just travelling through Taiwan, you might want to give this burger a skip as there are thousands of other foods you should be filling your stomach with rather than this burger. Though if you are in the mood for a coffee, you can get this as a combo for only a couple cents more than just the coffee, so why not try a bite or two.

Rating - 2.5/5