When this food blog was first started, I told myself I would never review a large fast food chain, particularly McDonald’s. Mind you, they have tried to reinvent themselves over the years with salads and healthier burger options. Their concept on trial in Adelaide is “Create Your Taste” where you use a touch screen to build your own burger with 30 different ingredients.

This concept reminds me of a self-serve Subway for burgers. The whole burger creation process is performed in 5 steps:

Step 1 – Choose your bun. There are two types of bun (a toasted brioche or baker’s bun) and the option to have the burger in a lettuce wrap.

Step 2 – Make it cheesy. There are 5 types of cheese which are cheddar, Swiss, colby jack, Mcdonald’s classic and shaved parmesan. You can select one or all, at no extra charge.

Step 3 – Turn up the taste. The “Create Your Taste” burger comes at a base price of $8.95. This particular step allows you to add extra items to your burger such as bacon, egg, beef patties, guacamole, mushrooms, tortilla strips and grilled pineapple. These items all come at an additional cost of course.

Step 4 – Fresh’n it up. This is where the vegetables are added with the choice of lettuce, tomato, caramelised onion, red onion, beetroot, pickles and jalapenos.

Step 5 – Get saucy. Finally, a burger requires sauce so it doesn’t taste too dry. There are 8 sauces to choose from with some fancy gourmet varieties such as tomato chilli jam, dijonnaise, herb aioli and chipotle mayo.

I did find the touch screen a little cumbersome to use. I accidentally clicked on ingredients that I didn’t want, and if you make a mistake, you have to start your order from the beginning.

My own burger creation consisted of 6 Angus beef patties, all of the cheeses, rasher bacon, red onion rings and big mac sauce in a brioche bun. Friends that have already been here have commented that their meals were ready within 5 minutes of ordering. My meal took a good 15 minutes which was a bit slow for my liking. After all, I am at a “fast” food restaurant.

When it finally arrived, the presentation wasn’t too bad. The meal was served on a nice wooden chopping board with the fries in a cute mini deep fryer. It’s the presentation I’d expect at a cafe. While there’s a lot of controversy as to what their beef patties are exactly made of, they’re still mass produced and taste the same as what I remember all those years ago. It’s nice to have all these extra ingredients on offer and to put it all together, but it’s just not quite the same as what you’d get from a gourmet burger joint.

In true McDonald’s style, the tables and chairs were filthy, and I was fortunate enough to find a clean seat to sit on. There was a friendly store attendant hovering around me trying to clean the place up and make a good impression, but it all got too much when she cleared my chopping board and empty drink container whilst I was still eating. This Create Your Taste concept sees you paying roughly the same price as what you’d pay for a burger at a cafe or gourmet burger joint. The idea is interesting and novel, but at the end of the day, it’s still McDonalds.

WHERE: 1 Baynes Place, Port Adelaide