Earlier this month I took a trip down to North Carolina to visit my girlfriend’s family. Little did I know the area surrounding Raleigh was a market in the midst of a fabled, almost forgotten fast food treasure.
THE MCRIB WAS BACK.
Boom, baby.
It’s pretty popular to demonize McDonald’s and the fast food industry lately. But I try not to let that deter my interest in the history of this world and its products, which is simply riveting once you start getting deep into the Wikipedia links. An easy, simple recommend is Ray Kroc’s biography. Kroc is the man who put McDonald’s on the map, and then duplicated it hundreds of times over until it covered the map. Read it if only for the similes dependent upon McDonald’s product references. (Example: “I have a saying that goes, ‘As long as you’re green you’re growing, as soon as you’re ripe you start to rot.’ And I was as green as a Shamrock Shake on St. Patrick’s Day. . “) This interest is probably why I will watch Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives for hours despite every bad feeling the sight of Guy Fieri conjures in me.
Turns out he’s a decent dude, but you gotta get past that hair.
Introduced the 1981, the McRib failed to earn its keep as a staple of the McDonald’s menu and lost its spot as a permanent item, except in Germany. A boneless pork patty MOLDED into the shape of a rack of ribs, as if it HAD bones in it, the McRib is just weird.
A good look at this offense to God.
It’s become steeped in an even weirder cult mythology as it sometimes returns to restaurants for a brief period of time as part of a McRib farewell tour, never to be seen again. The Simpsons paid homage to the phenomenon in an episode.
Now without lettuce!
But until 2009, I had never had a McRib. I don’t think the Northeast was ever a market where the farewell tour rolled its greasy, artery clogging wheels through. If it was, it must have been at a time when I was putting on the appearances of a healthy eater to impress a girl. But thanks to a McDonald’s in the Triangle Town Center Mall, I was able to taste a piece of food legend.
People, the McRib is terrible. You can’t taste the ridiculous shape when you eat it. All you can taste is the BBQ sauce the thing has been drenched in. BBQ sauce that has the distinct tang of cheap BBQ sauce. That tang that’s there just so the sauce isn’t a darker colored ketchup. It also has raw onion slices and a few pickle chips on it. I guess I tasted those, too. They added nothing but confusion and anger to the party in my mouth. The sad, sad party. In my mouth.
Fast food is supposed to be bad for you, no doubt. But the reason you keep eating it is because, typically, it tastes awesome. It was probably a bad idea in high school to make the Spicy Chicken Sandwich a dietary staple, but at least I was being welcomed to flavor country with every bite.
The McRib is, at best, food porn. Something titillating to look at and lust after, but something that, in person, it would be best not to put your mouth around. Because it is some seriously nasty shit.
January 21, 2009 at 11:37 pm
additional info:
The McRib is alive and well in Japan, as is the (wait for it) Double McRib! At least as a limited release.
Let’s see…the link still seems to work
http://www.mcdonalds.co.jp/menu/limited/mcrib/index.html
OH NO it’s not there anymore! Don’t the Japanese have any sense of history?!
ah, well.
The McRib is an evil thing. I’m not a rib person but it just looked and smelled…evil.
January 22, 2009 at 12:19 am
@ Above: Another thing which is alive and well in Japan is the Mega Mac (or the 4 patty Big Mac). I’d personally never seen this in America, so I was shocked to see such gluttony in Japan of all places. My girlfriend has even admitted to eating the odd Mega Mac. Perhaps it’s some part of the marketing power of McDonalds in Japan…absolute, American-style gluttony. Either way, I never ate one and I never plan to do so.