Tag: BBQ

I did something that I regret.

I did something that I can’t take back – that I can never take back – that I can never take back.

It is rare that I go into my little eating adventures under such a pall of nervousness – but – the day that I stumbled into the roadside attraction that is my nearest neighborhood McDonald’s with the intention of eating the McMarketing McPhenomenon that I had been hearing about for years and years, I knew that things would never be the same again. I had never had a McRib and I was terrified.

Yeah – no – seriously. I – the person that has made it one of my life’s missions to go out and eat the ridiculous – had never eaten a McRib. It seems McRidiculous.

I’m going to try to drop the “Mc” prefixes for a minute – to try to make this review easier to read than the meal was to eat. Indeed.

I knew very little about the McRib – other than it was oval, it was slathered with bar-b-que sauce and there were “bones” pressed into it. I had never been able to wrap my brain around this “pork” bar-b-que sandwich – and what pressed in “bones” meant. I was afraid of what I didn’t know. I was afraid to go into the night. Into the dark, dark, darkness.

I got my box – yep, it comes in a box . . . so there is some class in that – and I opened it. Absolutely no love went into the mess that I was looking at. There were only two pickles – so a third of the sandwich would be pickle free – much to my chagrin – because pickles have a way of making everything in the world a little bit better – vinegar will do that. There were also only about ten small pieces of onion – which left vast swaths of creepily textured swimming-in-sauce meatstuff bare for my imagination to behold. The “bones” were beyond as odd as I figured that they might be.

After twelve and a half minutes, I realized that I had been quietly sitting – just looking into the abyss that was going to be my lunch. I gulped, my hand went out and I took hold. It was either going to be the best thing that I had ever eaten – in which case I would rue all of the wasted years of my life . . . or – it was going to be the end of me. There was no way that there was going to be any kind of grey area with this thing – – – other than the pearlescent grey area between the bun – where the patty was supposed to be – that I noticed after taking my first bite.

Speaking of the first bite – I made sure to get some pickle and some onion – to make sure that I was getting a best case scenario. The bun was a bun. There was nothing special about it – but – it also didn’t let me down at all. I certainly wouldn’t kick it out of my bread box – if I found out that it had run away from the terrible life of holding a pressed piece of hell for the rest of it’s short time on the Earth. I would sit that bun down – and I would let it know that everything’s going to be okay. Shhhhhhhh, Little Bun, everything is going to be a-okay.

I may have been traumatized by the McRib. It may have been too much for me. It may have been too much.

I hit a wall on the third bite. I didn’t think that I was going to be able to finish it. It was terrible on so many levels that my brain stopped being able to process the errors that were pouring in. Maybe it was a texture thing – because the bread, onions, pickles and sauce were fine. Maybe the pressed “bones” idea was still getting to me. I wasn’t going to be able to finish.

My meal came with a small Coke. I was miserable at myself for not getting a larger Coke . . . I could have taken a bite and then taken a swig and then taken another swig and so on. Instead – I had to take several bites in between getting to take a drink. I wished that I had a pool filled with Coke – that I could have taken a dive into after every bite. I needed the taste distraction. I needed the acid to combat the misery that I was ingesting.

Eventually, I took my last bite. I had eaten the whole thing. I had beaten this particular dragon down. And then it hit me. I didn’t feel so good. My reaction was so quick and so violent that I wasn’t really sure what to do. I was feverishly driving home – like a wild animal running from a forest fire. My stomach was cramping. My mind was sprinting to try to come to terms with what I had just eaten. I was sweating. I feel like I could have stopped on the way to McDonald’s, poured a little bar-b-que sauce onto a pickle – with a bit of onion and licked a skunk and I would have been better off. At least slightly.

I got home and heartily embraced my hero – Extra-Strength Pepto-Bismol – and after a little bit of hang-out time on the cool tiles of the bathroom floor (full disclosure here – I didn’t explode – I was just too queasy to move any further) I was good(ish) to go.

Now – speaking of heros. Let me be your hero here. Let me get up on my pedestal of protection and scream to you to avoid getting – or even walking past – one of these sandwiches. They are some sort of potentially hazardous maybe extraplanetary pressed evil – only put onto this planet to hurt your stomach’s very soul. Stand down, back away and know that you will be a better person for it.

As if to taunt me further – a commercial for the McRib – a regular siren song – just played on my television. I watched the commercial. I looked at the sandwich. My eyes started to water and my stomach turned away like a cowed cur in a cage.

I know that I promised to avoid the use of McDumb McPrefixes – – – but – – – the only way that I can wrap up this review is with one super-appropriate word – and that is to say that eating the McRib made me feel nothing more and nothing less than McNasty.