McShaker - Denmark - December 2014

That's one of the nicer shaker colours I've eaten

They even coat the fries well

Consumed on 7 December 2014

Location - McDonald's City Square, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

Price - Free

Calories - ~2kcal

Many apologies for the delay for this review.  I've been in Kazakhstan over the last week, and our hotel didn't have any running water for 16 hours yesterday, so you can imagine how poor the internet quality was.  What was worse than the wifi, was that although McDonald's has been trying to come to Kazakhstan since 2012, they keep delaying their launch.  The first branch in Almaty was supposed to open in May 2014, but it has since been pushed to 'early' 2015.  If the complete emptiness of the Burger King and KFC branches in Almaty is anything to go by, I don't think they are ready for McDonald's just yet. Although Sri Lanka seems to do well, maybe they could make it work.

But one country which IS ready for McDonald's is Denmark. I reached out to McDonald's Denmark a couple months ago to see if they would be willing to send me over a packet of McShakers for me to review. I believe Denmark has had Shakers a couple of times over the last couple of years, and it's always been this standard 'shaker' flavour. It took them a couple weeks, but I did finally hear back, and they graciously sent me 5 packets to review. Although I've Shakers from many Asian countries (and even some fro the US), this would be the first I've tried from Europe.  

The since the generic "McShaker" name didn't really give any hint of the flavour, I had to decipher as much as I could from the Danish ingredient list.  Although, just from the smell, I wouldn't have even had to read it as it was clear the primary ingredient was paprika powder, we'll that was until I gave it a taste.  These were SALTY.  Although these were only a 2g packet, if you did the calculation from the sodium content in the nutrition breakdown, this 2g packet would have had around 500mg of salt, or 1/4 of your daily intake.  Coupled with the already salty fries, I found them a bit too salty for me.  I actually ate these a 2nd time, and I only used 1/2 a packet on my second attempt, and it was a much nicer balance of salt.   As salty as they were, they were also quite flavourful and actually had a surprising hint of spice as well.  About half way down the ingredient list was cayenne pepper, which was a nice surprise, and the kick worked very well with the smoky paprika taste.

All in, these were not the best shakers I've ever had, but they were hardly the worst.  During my second tasting, I found 1/2 the packet was indeed the sweetspot between salt and flavour balance.  With that in mind, I'll happily enjoy the rest of the packets they sent over, they will not go to waste.

Rating - 4/5