Christmas time is a great opportunity for fast food lovers here in Korea. The chains often try to come up with a promotional item to entice customers to visit. These days, there seems to be an extra urgency to get people into the stores, and as a result McDonald's has come up with not one but TWO new Christmas promotional items.
This time, McDonald's Korea has added the Rich Potato Burger and the Rich Potato Mushroom Burger. Now, I would be fine with a Portobello Mushroom as a substitute for a meat patty on a burger, but as a topping I generally give mushrooms a pass. That’s why when I visited the fast food giant, I decided to try the Rich Potato Burger.
I will start by saying I wish that McDonald's Korea had better touchscreen ordering systems. The screens are so non-responsive, you have to almost pound on them to get your selection recognized. Despite the difficulties, I did manage to order one meal, and waited for the order to be prepared.
When it was ready, I found a seat and began to unwrap the burger.
The Rich Potato Burger has two beef patties, lettuce, tomato, a slice of cheese, home fries and two sauces. So how was it?
Well, first, it was a little hard to eat. The sheer size of all the ingredients and toppings makes it a challenge.
Second, the potatoes were not the greatest. They were quite soft, whereas if they had been crunchier, similar to the hash brown patty on the 1955 Hash Brown Burger I wrote about a little while ago, I think it would have been better.
The beef patties were, to my taste, exactly the same as the patties that they use on the Big Mac. They were the same taste that you have become familiar with.
As mentioned, the Rich Potato Burger uses two types of sauces. On the bottom was a Cajun mustard sauce that added some spice to the burger, and was quite good I thought.
On the top, surrounding the potatoes, was a brown sauce, almost like a demi-glace. This sauce was, to me, very salty. In fact, the whole Rich Potato Burger was filled with a salty flavor whenever the Cajun sauce was not present.
The veg was fine, and the bun, while being a bit small, and held up well during the eating experience.
Overall, this burger would be great if the brown sauce was not so salty, and if the potatoes had a bit of crispiness to them.
I think I would try it again, but I might ask them to hold the brown sauce and see what the experience is like.