McSpicy Cajun - Seoul, South Korea - October 2013

Korea - You now put English on your packaging, but block foreign visitors to your website? 

Not that different fro a McChicken

Consumed on 11 October 2013

Location - McDonald's Myungdong, Seoul, South Korea

Lunch Combo Price - 3900KRW = $3.66USD

Calories - Unknown

So Korean McDonald's has gone (in typical Korean style), and blocked all foreign IPs from accessing its website.  I'm not sure what their thinking behind it was, but I've tried accessing www.mcdonalds.co.kr from multiple devices, from a couple different countries, and it never works, you can now only view it from inside Korea.  This meant in preparation to our trip to Korea, I had to ask my friends living there if anything was on promotion rather than being able to check myself.  They told me that they recently changed the Shanghai Chicken Burger to the "McSpicy", and they recently launched a new promo called the McSpicy Cajun Burger.  Since I've had the Shanghai Spice (and its a regular menu item), I went for the limited time one instead. They also released some chicken strips with the cajun sauce that's on this burger as a dipping sauce, but since I was going to be trying the sauce on the burger, I didn't feel the need to order the strips on their one.

My wife and I were only in Korea for about 10 hours in transit to Uzbekistan, so our plan was to eat as much food as possible in our short time there. Even though we ordered the burger at 10:30am (timed it so we could order as soon as breakfast was finished), this was already our 3rd meal of the day.  There were 4 of us walking around, so splitting the 1 meal between us wouldn't ruin our appetite for the rest of the day.

Definitely the same meat as a McChicken, and not the oily Chicken Thigh like South East Asian McSpicy's

We were also lucky in that since we ordered the combo between 10:30-13:30 we were able to get it at the discounted "lunch" price.  That meant it was about $2 cheaper than ordering it at dinner, and judging from the size of the burger, I would have been pretty disappointed if I paid nearly $6 for it at dinner, since the burger itself wasn't much larger than a standard McChicken.  The patty had the same breading as a McChicken, bit it wasn't the standard square, and it did look a little darker, so I'm lead to believe that they added a bit of "spice" to the breading in order to call it a "McSpicy".   The sauce was the promotional "Cajun" sauce, which on it's own wasn't all that unique, but you have to remember that this is Korea, where the McDonald's promotional burgers are historically pretty weak (and few and far between). The sauce reminded me of a creamier, less Ranchy, version of the Southwest Ranch that I had sent up by a reader from New Zealand.  I think a bit of peppercorns mixed in there would have been a nice touch and helped bring out the flavours a bit more.

The biggest problem with the meal wasn't the taste, nor the price of the food, but the freshness.  As mentioned, we ordered this as soon as breakfast was finished, but surprisingly not only was our burger lukewarm, but our fries were ice cold.  And in a shot to the gut, my Korean McDonald's point card is no longer accepted, so I had to throw it away with enough points on it to get a Bulgogi Burger combo...At least the Iced Coffees have come down to a reasonable price. (1000KRW = $0.94USD)

Rating - 2.5/5