Custom Order: McDonald's Quarter Pounder Mac Style

Say you wanted a Big Mac from McDonald's, but preferred that it were meatier and easier to cram in your burger hole. Also, it'd be nice if the middle bun didn't threaten to escape every time you bit into it. With that in mind, I tried to order a Quarter Pounder Mac Style i.e. with Mac sauce and shredded lettuce instead of ketchup and mustard.

A Quarter Pounder goes for $3.29 at my local McDonald's and they charge 30 cents extra for shredded lettuce (bringing the total to $3.59), but here's the difficulty with custom ordering:

A Quarter Pounder typically comes with slivered onions and pickles so when they rang up my Quarter Pounder as "No Mustard, No Ketchup, Add Shred Lettuce, Add Mac Sauce," I figured I'd have onions and pickles, but sadly no.

When you order something that a line employee is not used to making in an industry with low wages and high turnover, sometimes something gets lost in translation between you stating your order and that lovely CRT order screen on the other end. Also, they have to put it together in like 10 seconds.

What I ended up getting was a Quarter Pounder with just cheese, Mac sauce, and oddly enough, hand-leafed lettuce. My guess is whoever was assembling my sandwich, was thinking Angus Third Pounder with Mac Sauce.

So, a bit of an ordering fail for me, but not unexpected. Of course the question is: How did it taste?

The leaf lettuce threw me for a bit of a loop. Pared with the Mac Sauce, if felt like eating a salad and a cheeseburger at the same time, though there were definite traces of Big Mac flavor to be had here.

The Quarter Pounder patty holds up well with some beefy flavor although the cheese isn't as noticeable as in a Big Mac.

The end result is a beefier Big Mac-ish experience mixed with a feeling of eating salad. I didn't miss the pickles, but found myself wanting for onions.