McDonalds España

I've written before about being fascinated with American fast food chains operating abroad and how they adapt to fit their surroundings.  We were still looking for fruits/vegetables after our pub dinner and stopped in at McDonalds looking for something like a yogurt parfait.  We ended up getting a variety of snacks from their 1 euro menu (called un x un).

The McDonalds menu in Barcelona had so many things that we had never seen before at McDonalds here (not that we go often, but I do look at all the ads in the windows).  They had chicken wings, happy meals with carrots or cherry tomatoes as sides, potato wedges, the "McIberico" (with ham, of course), Milka donuts, and much more.

A got a black & white cone (con black & white) - soft serve ice cream in a chocolate-dipped cone.

A likes ice cream and A liked this cone.  It was a good dessert.

We also got the Greek yogurt with fruit (iogurt grec amb fruites), which had an assortment of berries (mostly strawberries and blueberries).

This was really good and left us wondering why we can't have a healthy snack like this at our McDonalds at home.  It was exactly what I wanted after all the sandwiches and burgers.  The yogurt was smooth and the fruit was sweet and juicy.

Another thing we don't have at McDs at home: onion rings (anelles de ceba).

Burger King has onion rings at home but McDs does not.  Why not?  Onion rings are tasty crunchy snacks.  These onion rings also were better than the BK ones at home.

One of our favorite items from the un x un menu was the gazpacho (gaspatxo).

The gazpacho was in single serving bowls and made by Alvalle - the same gazpacho we saw at Carrefour earlier in the day.

From what we remember, it was mostly a smooth tomato/vegetable soup with a little bit of pulp.  It was cool and refreshing, exactly what we wanted.  I can't explain it but sometimes I just crave tomatoes.  This fulfilled that craving.

On our way out, we took a look at the dessert case which, as usual, had a lot of stuff we don't have at home. Macarons!

Visiting fast food outlets abroad always makes me wonder why there are so many great things that we don't have.  I would probably go to places like McDonalds more if they had things like this.  A bowl of gazpacho, some onion rings on the side, and a dessert of yogurt with berries, for about 3 euro?  That would make for a great, mostly healthy, and cheap lunch!  Fast food chains are criticized here for having so much unhealthy cheap food, but the stores abroad just prove that they can (and do) sell things other than crappy triple patty bacon burgers that clog your arteries.  Why can't they share some of these good ideas with the American stores?  Perhaps people would make "better" choices if there were good alternatives to what we have now.