Caussade Riviere: a quaint village slap bang in the middle of the French countryside. Idyllic. Peaceful. And not an ounce of bloody broadband to be found.
Thankfully, there’s a saviour. A saviour with golden arches and a penchant for fried food. Aye. That’s right. I’m talking about McDonalds.
Oh how I reviled McDonalds when I lived in Edinburgh. As my hungover flatmate begged me to drive her ten minutes around the corner so she could indulge her hunger for Big Macs, I said no. “Please!” Emma whined, “I’ll give you a tenner!” I just laughed in her face and went back to bed.
The first time I thought McDonalds was alright was when we were en route to an aparthotel in Toulouse and our sat nav sent us to the wrong street. After heading to the building that was apparently our hotel and seeing that it was quite clearly a residential house, we knew something was up. Quick bit of wi-fi stealing from McDo’s and we were on our way.
The second time I thought maybe McDonald’s wasn’t so bad was when I saw how many French people actually eat there. If you fancy a timely burger at lunchtime, forget it. Queues out the door. The French are supposed to have pretty good taste in food, so that’s a good sign, right?
We now live in a house with no internet. With a growing client list, a dwindling savings account, and only a few gigs of data on our 3G connection, their free wi-fi saved our bacon yet again.
So when James had to take a Skype call with a client last week, I skipped along behind him overjoyed that I’d be able to finally upload all of my Christmas photos onto Facebook. And that’s when I saw it.
The McCamembert. *
*not what it’s actually called, but what t’internets is referring to it as anyway so let’s roll with it!
The Guardian has already done a piece about it, and being just as highbrow as them I knew I had to order it.
In France, there are these cool little self serve kiosks where you can type in your order without having to speak to anybody. My French is good enough to order scran, thank you very much, but I’m an anti-social pig so the machine it was. After we ordered our meal it tried to upsell us coffee and dessert; cunning move, Maccy D’s, but not cunning enough.
So how was it? I think the best way to figure that out is to steal Adam Richman’s famous B.I.T.E scale from that highbrow piece of telly entertainment called The Best Sandwich in America. Hopefully I’m not going to get an angry lawyer letter.
I opened the box lovingly, and looked inside.
Bread: The Camembert burger arrived on a ciabatta roll. Lightly toasted, it had a soft interior. The crust was nice and chewy too and lended (loaned?) itself well to the burgeryness inside.
Interior: Inside was a standard McDonalds burger, topped with two slices of camembert, and a wee bit of frissee lettuce. I thought there was meant to be some sauce, but there wasn’t. Fine by me, I don’t like saucy burgers.
Taste: Damn good! Ok, maybe not ‘damn’ good, but better than standard McDonald’s fare all the same. I’d agree with the evaluation that it tasted a bit like brie but I didn’t mind. It went better with the fatty meat than the usual processed slices. This burger is very, very, very, rich.
Experience: All in all, a pleasant experience. I only had half because James is a cheapskate and only got one between us, but the half that I did eat left me feeling good. Unlike the inevitable McDonald’s headache kicked in half an hour later.
Hiya, I'm Jemma: an Edinburgh lass currently chomping my way around the South of France. I like cheap eats, diamond in the rough eateries, and trying new things.
I'm munching my way around the Haute-Pyrenees until April, when I'll be heading back to Edinburgh for a week and then onwards to adventures in Ireland, Spain, and Portugal!
I hated McDonalds in my Edinburgh days too, I remember going there once for a breakfast and one other time because I craved a strawberry milkshake, but that was it for three years. It was entirely a confused young man’s unclear principles thing rather than about health, as I would regularly enjoy all the worst morsels from chip, tatty and kebab shops (though sweaty kebabs are clearly just amazing).
Since I’ve been travelling I’ve avoided them most of the time, unless they’re the only thing open or I have a long bus or plane journey and I’m paranoid that eating local food will lead to disasters. But I still feel like I’m betraying some principle when I go in, and feel disappointed when I see loads of western people going there rather than the same-priced Asian food chain restaurants that serve objectively tastier stuff like rice burgers.
Mmm rice burgers! That sounds much better than Maccy D’s.
I would still be avoiding them if it wasn’t for the simple fact that nowhere else has wifi. Now I think about it, even if an independent place did have wifi, I’d still go to McDo’s. The simple reason being I feel a lot better about taking up a table in a corporate chain and using the wifi for six hours on one Coke than I would sitting in an independent place like Brewlab, where I could be preventing a higher paying customer from sitting in. Take that, big corporations!
Jemma recently posted..The McCamembert Burger