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| McDonald's Singapore Fiery Pepper Chicken Burger - May 2015 |
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| I'll give them that the patty was a decent size |
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| Such a decent size, no one should ever order a double... |
Consumed on 16 May 2015
Location - McDonald's Kovan Station, Singapore
Combo Price - $7.20SGD = $5.45USD
Calories - Unknown
McDonald's Singapore quietly killed the Spiced Butter Teppanyaki after only a 2 week run, which is a nice change from the 2 month long Prosperity and Samurai Burger promos they run every year. As much as that was a surprise, it's successor the Fiery Pepper Chicken was also a complete surprise, with a quiet online-only launch. Previous McDonald's promos have launched with TV commercials, billboards, bus-wraps and launch parties, so these two burgers are a recent change in direction at McDonald's Singapore. As excited as I was for the Spiced Butter burger as that was a completely new and interesting topping, the Pepper Chicken is yet another spicy burger, which I'm starting to get sick of at McDonald's Singapore in all honesty.
This burger had a black pepper infused breading, a new "spicy" sauce made up of a blend of mustard, chilli pepper, and the tongue-numbing sichuan flower pepper. That sauce was the only thing that caused me to buy this burger since they've already introduced a black pepper patty once before.
I'll start by saying that the patty, was much improved over the 2013 patty. The original was so lightly battered that many people thought it was grilled chicken and not a deep fried patty, and although I usually don't like heavily fried chicken, this was much better with the seasoning. They've also switched to a skinless chicken thigh piece which also another plus in my book. The biggest surprise had to have been the thickness of the meat, for McDonald's it was shockingly thick, but the quality of that meat wasn't the best, it was very oily and reminded me more of KFC chicken rather than McDonald's.
As mentioned, only tried this burger because of the sauce, and after following the surprisingly good Spiced Butter sauce, I was hoping for the best. Unfortunately the sauce was a massive let-down. I'll admit it had a decent spice to it, but you couldn't taste any of the mustard, or more importantly the sichuan pepper. Being mustard based (and I'm a huge mustard fan) I had hoped that this sauce would have been rich and flavourful, even if it was lacking on the spice, but it didn't taste any different from a mayo-based McDonald's sauce.
The bun has been used so often that they didn't even bother to call it out in the marketing material, and the only other topping apart from the sauce was shredded lettuce, so even though the patty was pretty good, I wouldn't recommend trying this.
Rating - 3/5
I'd also like to call our the marketing McDonald's Singapore still continues to use. McDonald's only uses a double patty burger in it's marketing photos, and their large menu board in the restaurants. They only have a very small sign on the side of the counter showing a single patty option. Adding the extra patty is almost 25% more expensive than the single, so it certainly isn't worth it.
Oh, in other news. We've confirmed that our departure date from Singapore will be 23 August. So expect an entirely new homebase for reviews after that date!