McDonald's Tasting Spree

Ebi or shrimp burger with pineapple in it at McDonald's is very bland

My general rule is to only eat McDonald's once a year -- after I finish the Standard Chartered Marathon 10K race as an excuse to refuel on calories, and it's open early.

However the other day I broke that rule when a friend visiting from the United States was on a mission to try some McDonald's food that you can't find there and I agreed to help try some of it. Why not in the name of research?

Pass on the mango drink with cheese on top

At the giant tablet where you can order food without a human, he was all excited to try several items and luckily we got there just before the lunchtime rush to secure a table too.

After about 10 minutes the food arrived in boxes and wrapped in paper, though the regular waffle fries -- called "potato grids" were already decent on their own. But when we added the extra seasoning of sesame oil flavour, and shook them in a paper bag together, the waffle fries -- oh I mean the potato grids -- were coated in a powder that made it hard to consume, and only when combined with my saliva did I detect the sesame oil taste that was completely redundant.

In terms of burgers we tried the ebi or shrimp burger with pineapple. Intriguing, right? Wrong. There was absolutely no taste in this deep-fried shrimp patty with a piece of lettuce, mayonnaise and canned pineapple. Why would anyone want to eat this?

We also tried the cowboy Angus -- a 130g thick cut Angus patty with a deep-fried onion ring, Cheddar cheese and Emmenthal cheese and shredded lettuce. You need a really big mouth to fit all that in, but it was a burger masquerading to be something fancy, but in reality it was hardly impressive. There was too much going on that the flavours cancelled themselves out.

Definitely go for the deep-fried chicken wings!

McDonald's is trying to catch up with the bubble tea craze minus the boba or black pearls and offering cheese toppings -- sourced from Europe and New Zealand -- on different flavoured drinks, like soy milk matcha tea, salted caramel latte, and long black. My friend ordered a mango one and it arrived with a thick white foam on top with an artful design of hearts in mango sauce.

But alas, I can only say the same refrain -- no taste! As we were drinking this without a straw, it took several gulps to even get to the mango part, and even then there was no mango taste! It's so visually misleading.

However our visit to the fast-food joint was redeemed by the chicken wings, deep-fried of course. Luckily we could order two pieces, one drumstick and one winglet. The outside was crispy, and surprisingly moist inside.

So I'm definitely done with McDonald's for the rest of the year. The lesson learned is to stick to the classics -- but maybe with a chicken wing on the side.

Sucking Up the Bubble Tea Hype

These Heytea drinks look messy but they taste oh so good!

I finally succumbed and tried one of many bubble tea brands that have sprouted in Hong Kong in the past year.

My colleague and I went to Heytea, which opened a store in the basement of Times Square two months ago so we went to check it out.

We came just before lunchtime so there wasn't much of a lineup thank goodness.

Many Heytea outlets look like this when they are busy

The shop doesn't have any seating -- everyone stood outside to wait for their number to be called on a digital board with a ding dong sound.

I was surprised to find the prices were very reasonable too. We chose to share an Oreo-flavoured boba tea (boba meaning the large tapioca balls), in a milk tea flavour that cost HK$28; for a matcha flavoured one it would be HK$36.

The wait was about 10 minutes or so which wasn't too bad and when our order was finally called we got a small plastic cup with the black pearls at the bottom, the milk tea and crushed Oreo cookies on top.

I haven't had bubble tea in decades -- it's not a drink I would normally choose because the black pearls are hardly nutritious, and I never finish eating them either.

But that first sip -- I sucked up those tapioca balls and they had a caramelized sugar flavour that complemented the milk tea drink (more milky than tea). And on top of that the crushed cookies -- with a tinge of salt -- made the drink sweet, salty, chewy and crunchy all in one.

Oreo-flavoured bubble tea with the black pearls looked like this

Thank goodness we shared that drink -- I wouldn't have finished one on my own -- or maybe I would have drunk all the milk tea and left most of the tapioca pearls behind. In the end we did just that... a waste, but we didn't need to add more inches to our waists.

Heytea is one of the hottest bubble tea brands at the moment, and has had a meteoric rise since it started in 2012 in Jiangmen, Guangdong province. It now has its headquarters in Shenzhen, and is best known for its cheese topping on the drink... which didn't quite seem appetizing to us.

Will we try Heytea again? Probably, but not anytime soon... but that caramelized sugar taste was so good....! Like drinking a liquid form of milk tea creme brulee...!

Heytea
B216, B2, Times Square
1 Matheson Street
Causeway Bay
3106 2996

Do We Need More Bubble Tea?

Customers wait over an hour for bubble tea at Tiger Sugar in Causeway Bay

 Would you wait over an hour for bubble tea?

It's all the craze in Hong Kong which I find bizarre as bubble tea was the drink of the 80s and now it's back again?

This bubble tea shop is social media savvy

Over a month ago a colleague told me about a shop called Tiger Sugar that opened in Causeway Bay and people were willing to wait over an hour for the drink -- even though they were wilting in the heat.

And landlords are greedily rubbing their hands together at the thought of more bubble tea brands coming to the city looking for spaces to rent.

Since July there were 62 different brands of bubble tea in Hong Kong with 282 shops.

Do we really need more?

Apparently the demand is there. These shops just need 250 sq ft to 300 sq ft preferably near schools, offices, where young people hang out like Mongkok, Jordan, Causeway Bay, Central.

And the shops are financially able to afford rents now that they have dropped about 20 percent since the peak in 2014. With rents at around HK$300 to HK$400 per sq ft, that means the total rent could be HK$90,000 to HK$120,000. That's a lot of cups of bubble tea to sell.

People take pictures to show others what they're drinking

What is driving the demand is social media -- people posting pictures of the drinks they have bought, raving about how long they waited and yet the bubble tea was so good. Those looking at the pictures feel like they're missing out.

Not me!

Bubble tea drinks are hardly healthy, as it's the giant tapioca balls are made of starch, which means lots of sugar. No one really finishes all those tapioca balls and even worse the drinks are served in plastic cups with plastic straws. Hardly environmentally friendly.

And we're going to have more bubble tea shops?

This craze is temporary and then many of these shops are going to close down. Then again I might be wrong, but it's definitely breeding a lot of potential diabetics in the future...