Consumed on 11 January 2015
Location - McDonald's Nong Chik, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Price - 4 Nuggets + Sauce = 3MYR ($0.81USD). Sauce only - 1MYR ($0.28USD)
Calories - ~150kcal
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| That's right - 5.95MYR ($1.66) for a Cheeseburger COMBO! |
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| The lovely sights of Johor Bahru |
McDonald's Malaysia released two promo sauces in early January 2015, French Cheese and Honey Mustard. Promo sauces are quite popular in many different markets, this is actually the first time I've any for sale in Malaysia. Although we had McDonald's only the day before, I was unable to find these two sauces available at any branch we passed throughout the day. I ended up finding them about a 10 minute walk from our hotel the following day. I was also a little perplexed with the new McNugget pricing. 4 pieces + 1 sauce has always been the unbelievably cheap 3MYR ($0.80USD). Launching alongside these new sauces are a 10 pieces @ 9.90MYR, and 20 pieces@17MYR, so it's still a better value to buy the original 4 piece! I was also a little shocked at the price of a sauce ala carte. I assumed it was going to be 0.50MYR, but they were in fact, 1MYR each. Not that it's expensive, but when you could 4 nuggets for only 2MYR more, I can't see how you could pass on that value.
I'll start with the Honey Mustard, since I believe I've had this exact same sauce before in Hong Kong and Singapore. They both had the same Chinese manufacturer, so I can't assume they are any different from each other. In fact, McDonald's Hong Kong recently re-released the same 4 sauces they had in Summer 2013 of which Honey Mustard was a flavour, so I don't believe this is coincidence. It was still as sweet as I remembered, and had a distinct lack of mustard flavour to it. It may have been the heat and humidity of Malaysia, but this had slightly congealed, and since it is primarily oil, corn syrup and vinegar, there was a pretty gross looking sheen on it when I opened the tub. Since we only ordered a single 4-piece, we quickly ran out of nuggets to dip. I liked being able to scoop up individual mustard seeds with the fries.
The real 'promo' to me this time had to have been the French Cheese sauce. The name was clearly misleading, because this was hardly from France (product of China), and there was hardly any cheese inside (8 items down the ingredient list). This was similar to the Squeezy Cheese I had from Japan, in that although it hardly had any real cheese to it, it was one of those guilty pleasure flavours. On it's own, it would have been pretty gross, but dipping something fried and oily into it, took this scary looking orange goo and actually made it palatable. What made it even more strange was that this was at significantly firmer than any nugget dip I've ever had before, almost as if they were trying to copy the consistency of actual melted nacho cheese. Whereas McDonald's dips are usually on the watery side, this was thick and sticky, once it was on a nugget or fry, there was no way it was coming off...no doubt doing the same to my arteries...
Rating -
Honey Mustard - 2.5/5
French Cheese - 3/5