Consumed on 16 May 2013
Location - McDonald's Chinatown Point Mall, Singapore
Standard Combo Price - $6.50SGD = $5.20USD. Add additional $0.65 for Shakers and McFizz.
Calories - ~550 kcal
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| Do they have lemon in Peri Peri? |
Apparently McDonald's had another preview 'party' this Monday and sent 50 people messages to invite them to try it. I was surprised they didn't even bother to ask me, but I guess they weren't too happy with my Black Pepper Flamer review, so as much as I would have liked to try it a couple days early, I waited patiently until it was released today. I told my wife about the new burger last night and though she wasn't feeling 100%, she said she would meet me at Chinatown Point (the closest branch to our office) so we could try it together. She had actually never had Peri Peri anything before coming to Singapore, we bought a bottle of South African Peri Peri sauce to cook with from Mustaphas, and she loves it. A part of our honeymoon is going to be in South Africa and she's really looking forward to having authentic Peri Peri.
I was hoping that they would introduce new sides and not keep the same Lychee McFizz and Thai Citrus Shakers, but with past experience with the Prosperity and then the Chicken Prosperity burger, I had a feeling they would be keeping the same sides. I was only somewhat right, as though the kept the same Thai Citrus Shakers, they introduced the Passion Fruit McFizz, which has been available in Malaysia for the past two weeks, but strangely they still sell the Lychee flavour as well. I don't know if that's intended or if the branch was just clearing out lychee syrup stock.
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| Though I was standing in the queue, this was scooped by the wife pretty quickly. |
We assumed that visiting at 13:20 we would have avoided the lunchtime rush, but we weren't that lucky, we arrived to the small Chinatown Point branch and though 3 registers were open, there was a queue of at least 5 people at each one. In most countries this normally wouldn't be that much of a problem, but it seems that queues just move ungodly slow here in Singapore. I noticed that a woman in front of us had a post-it note with about 15 different orders on it, so we quickly moved over to the next queue, which ended up being the right decision as we ended up beating her by a long margin. We made it to the front of the queue in about 7 minutes, and though McDonald's in Singapore is now using the little 1 minutes hourglass to try and get each person ordered and out in under a minute, ours took about 3 minutes, and we were given a Vanilla Cone coupon for our delay. I have a feeling this won't last too long in Singapore as it seemed that EVERY person ordering food was given a coupon, the only man I saw not given one was the old man who ordered only coffee.
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| McDonald's Singapore Red Peri Scorcher |
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| Doesn't it look strangely like Burger King Chicken? |
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| Noticeably thinner than the other spicy burgers |
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| Seasoning in both the sauce, and the patty! |
As my wife and I already tried the Shakers and the McFizz we went with the standard $6.50 combo, my colleague paid the $0.65 extra to have his it upsized and with the McFizz. Nice to see that it was a little cheaper than the Black Pepper Flamer, but the double still wasn't worth the extra $1.95. The bun was larger than the Flamer, but the chicken patty seemed a little thinner. Like the McSpicy and the Flamer, it used a chicken thigh, but because it was thin, it wasn't as juicy as the others. The texture was a like a combination between a McSpicy and a McChicken, and I thought it was perfect. The thinner coating of breading allowed the burger to not be over oily. After the first bite, it reminded me of a Burger King fried chicken patty, though it's not something I've had in a long long time, this definitely didn't taste like typical Singapore McDonald's.
Same as with the Black Pepper Flamer, McDonald's are promoting this as 'competition' against the McSpicy, and though they make the promo images out that the new burger is spicy, just it isn't. I might even say the Shakers were spicier than this burger. That's not to say that the Red Peri flavour wasn't good, I thought it was a great combination with the new chicken patty. This is one of the best flavoured burgers that I've had from Singapore. Whereas with the Black Pepper burger the seasoning was mixed into the patty, for the Peri, the seasoning was mixed with the mayo, which mean't you could taste it as the flavour wasn't lost in the oil from the chicken, and though they didn't put all that much on the burger, it still was flavourful.
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| Lunch with my colleague Mervyn |
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| Showing off his new application. Except it's been available in Korea for years. |
Rating - 4.5/5
With onions or a tomato, this would have received a perfect score. They also should have made it at least somewhat spicy as they are promoting it as such.