McDonald’s new Chicken Big Mac is a bland, beige mess

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The Big Mac is unquestionably McDonald’s marquee item. And in a sea of fast-food sameness, an iconic, standout product is as golden as those famous arches.

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So it’s understandable that the chain, when tasked with developing more chicken sandwich options to satisfy customers’ insatiable hunger for white-meat burger alternatives, would look to its star player. But this strategy, which produced the new Chicken Big Mac, was about as wise as sending an MVP quarterback in to kick a clutch field goal.

To begin with, the sandwich doesn’t seem like the product of much serious R & D. The younger Big Mac sibling simply swaps in chicken patties — that resemble chicken nuggets in disc form — for the beef ones and calls it a day. Even the name, the Chicken Big Mac, keeps the relationship to the Ur-McDonald’s item clear. (At least they didn’t try to get too creative here, like Burger King did with the awkward, short-lived Ch’King.)

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But the concept should have given pause to the burger wizards toiling away back at McDonald’s HQ in Chicago. The Chicken Big Mac is a bad idea even on paper. See, a big knock on the otherwise-delicious Big Mac has always been that its club-sandwich structure, with a third bun bisecting the layers of burgers, lettuce, sauce, onion, cheese and pickles, incorporates too much bread. So the new item, with its duo of tempura-coated chicken patties, essentially means you’re staring down a sandwich with seven layers of bread.

Just getting the sandwich into one’s mouth is a challenge, thanks to engineering flaws. Whereas the usual burger patties smoosh down, the crunchy chicken resists (and slides around), resulting in a messy mouthful. Which you’ll probably regret anyway — or at least I did.

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Because, folks, this is one bland bird. Without the beefy minerality that burger patties lend, the overall impression here is flavourless, bready beige-ness. The chicken discs are devoid of any actual chicken taste, much like the nuggets on which they are based. But at least those childhood favourites typically get dunked in zesty barbecue or honey-mustard sauce, unlike the patties here, which have only the sweet, creamy Mac “secret” sauce (spoiler alert: It’s basically Thousand Island dressing) and a few pickles to lend them any zip.

And after tasting the Chicken Big Mac ($7.49 a la carte at my nearest D.C. location; 10 cents more than the regular Big Mac) and wondering why it didn’t have the same pleasing balance as the original, it dawned on me — the new sandwich doesn’t include onions, which add complexity and bite. A member of McDonald’s culinary team told food website the Takeout that the minced alliums were deemed unnecessary: “For this particular Chicken Big Mac, it doesn’t really fit the whole flavour experience,” he told the publication.

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Count me unconvinced.

The chicken patties are flawed, too. They’re different than the other two patties available at McDonald’s — far less seasoned than the one found in the original McChicken, and flatter and more processed than the McCrispy’s, which has a discernible chicken-meat texture. While the new patties probably start out crunchy, any part of them that comes into contact with the Big Mac sauce quickly turns mushy, and bits of the breading can peel off in unappealing layers, revealing a sticky undercoat.

The Chicken Sandwich Wars among fast-food brands might have dominated headlines in 2019, but the battle has been quietly raging ever since. (Just this week, Popeyes introduced a ghost-pepper version of its wildly popular spicy sandwich.) McDonald’s — which remains the top dog in the overall fast-food category — has been slow to the draw at every step. It tried to counter Popeyes in 2019 with an unconvincing barbeque-sauced version that was assembled from items already in its pantry. And after agitation by franchisees frustrated by a lack of a premium poultry offering that could compete with Chick-fil-A, the company in 2020 introduced a knockoff of its own, the McCrispy.

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The Chicken Big Mac has been tested in the United Kingdom and in Canada, along with a limited domestic market, where it has been met with mixed reviews. It quickly sold out in the U.K., and since debuting late last week, has found some fans among American consumers. Others, like me, though, are unimpressed with this chicken-in-name-only Big Mac riff: “I literally don’t taste the chicken,” complained one TikTok reviewer. “Tasted like i was basically eating a bread and lettuce salad with mac sauce as dressing,” a Redditor wrote.

McDonald’s might be trying to capture the magic of its signature burger to compete in the ongoing poultry skirmish, but this bird clearly isn’t the big gun the brand was looking for.

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