04 October, 2016

Thai Sweet Chili Chicken - Windsor, Canada - September 2016

McDonald's Canada Thai Sweet Chili Chicken - Windsor, Ontario - September 2016

Consumed on 16 September 2016
Location - McDonald's Walker Road, Windsor, Ontario Canada
Price - $3.37CAD = $2.56USD
Calories - ~390kcal

McDonald's Canada Receipt September 2016
This is my last review from North America on this trip, as I am already firmly back in Asia.  I started writing this review last night waiting for a flight from Ho Chi Minh City back to Bangkok after not eating anything from McDonald's Vietnam (they were however still heavily promoting the Banh Mi that I reviewed last time).  As I was writing my first paragraphs, my flight went from delayed, to cancelled, which started 2 hours of bureaucracy started to get allowed back into Vietnam for the night as I would have to wait until the following morning for a flight back.  Not only did that delay this review from being posted, but it allowed me to stop into a McDonald's the following morning where I did find something to review! But enough about Vietnam, this is the Thai Sweet Chilli Chicken McTaster from Canada.

When I arrived in Canada, both The Wife and my mother teased me a bit when they saw the large sign hung outside a local McDonald's promoting the Thai Sweet Chilli Chicken, as it's just my luck that I'd fly around the world from Thailand to Canada to only have a "Thai" burger.  Luckily apart from the sauce, there wasn't that much "Thai" about this sandwich.  

It launched under the same McTaster line as it's Mexican cousin that I reviewed a couple weeks ago and also sold at the same $2.99+tax price point.  It also uses the same Paprika spiced bun, but rather than a single small hamburger patty of beef, it used a much larger by comparison fried chicken patty. This mean't that the burger was substantially larger and it didn't seem such a hideous price that the beef did when holding it.  It still shouldn't have been more than $2 as it wasn't really any bigger than a standard McChicken, but at least it had some weight to it.  

Whereas the Mexican Beef had Cheese and Nacho Strips together with it's Chipotle sauce, the Chicken on this sandwich was flanked with relatively tame lettuce and a surprising addition, large chunks of cucumber.  Cucumber isn't really served on much in Thailand so I'm not sure where that idea came from, but felt it did work pretty well with the McChicken sauce.  The actual pieces of cucumber used were nearly 1cm thick so they added a decent crunch when you did take a bite. I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm not normally a fan of a single sandwich with 2-sauces, especially when one is mayo-based.  This burger bad both McChicken sauce together with a Sweet Chilli (to give the burger it's name).  In this instance it wasn't horrible and although my photos make it look like there was a lot of sauce on there, it probably had just the right amount of each.  Like most chilli based sauces, I would have liked to have been at least somewhat spicy, but that's pretty expected being a sweet chilli sauce in North America.  

All in, this one is probably worth a try, especially if you've never had cucumber on a burger before.

Rating - 4/5

McDonald's Canada Free Big Mac, McChicken Sauce
McDonald's Canada has launched the ordering kiosks that Europe and Asia have had for a couple of years now. That meant I could dig through and take a look through the condiments section and see what I could find as that's an easy way I find new sauces to review.  Nothing special, but  I always forget that Big Mac Sauce, McChicken Sauce (Mayo) and Vinegar are free options in Canada so I ordered one of each.