Fast Food Watch: Germany Should Be Offended by McDonald's Take on Sausage Burger

After biting into McDonald’s German Sausage Double Beef Burger – known in Chinese as the “Non-Vegetarian Tyrant” (不素之霸), I felt a bit like a Great White must feel when it thinks it is about to bite down on a juicy seal only to discover it has accidentally chomped down on a rubber-and-metal coated scuba diver.

The German-themed menu item, back once again as a seasonal item just in time for Weihnachten, looks enticing enough on the menu: two beef patties topped by two sausage links, drizzled with what appears to be rustic seeded mustard and served on a pretzel bun.

But I knew I was in for trouble when, after placing my order, I attempted to snap a photo of said menu item. Merely lifting my phone to eye level was enough to set the entire row of cashiers into a screaming rage: “No photos! No photos!”

Upon arrival I found out why: the real-life item could not compare to its promotional shot.

To be honest, I should have known from simple sandwich geometry that two cylindrical links have no place on a burger. Resting daintily on two meager beef patties, the two sausage links were held in place by gobs of some unpleasantly flavorless mustard-mayo combination, as if the person assembling the monstrosity knew the links had no chance of staying bun-bound without the ample use of edible mortar.

Nevertheless, I paid for the thing, and to be frank (ha) I was hungry, so I wasn't going to leave without giving it a try. Next bad sign: the doughy bun, imprinted with a split-top pretzel-like pattern, immediately split in two as I tried to make sure neither of the two wieners squirted out the side as I took my first bite.

Working against a quickly deteriorating situation, I took a big bite to nail one of the sausages in mid-slide, hoping the bracing tang of some quality mustard would make me forget I was losing grip on the rest of the burger. Sadly, no bite was returned – the mustard had none of the kick that real mustard has (hell, even the heavily processed yellow mustard that comes standard on a McDonald’s burger in the US has far more flavor).

After a few more clumsy squeezes to keep the remaining sausage from exiting the bun, the burger patties also started coming apart, and fairly soon the contraption was in pieces on my tray, at which point I gave up and quickly shuttled the resulting mess into the trash, before Chinese diners around me could begin pondering: "what the hell kind of foreigner is this, can’t even eat a burger without descending into barbarianism."

Given Mickey D’s long ago mastered the flat sausage patty for its breakfast sandwiches, one wonders why it wasn’t employed for use in such a sandwich. Go with relatively flat ingredients, switch to a spicier mustard and top it with at least some semblance of a vegetable (a pickle or two and some lettuce would do well), and you’ve got yourself a sandwich. But this one? Give it a miss. In the mean time, stick to more familiar menu items.

Photos: Michael Wester