Lawsuit Waiting To Happen – 等着起诉的发生

I noticed that one of my favourite eateries, Mike’s, has had its trademark infringed by a soulless multinational from the USA! I’m not going to mention where I saw the other company…but here is Mike and his super-shop!

我发现了我最喜欢的餐厅之一Mike’s被一个美国的跨国公司侵权了商标！我不想说我是在哪里看到的…但这里是Mike和他的超级商店！

I hope Mike takes McDonald’s Shanghai to court and sues them for every penny they’ve got.

我希望Mike把麦当劳上海告上法庭，起诉他们得到的每一分钱。

How to order Mcdonald’s delivery in Shanghai (and Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen…)

Many people ask me how to order McDonald’s delivery in Shanghai – and I’ve been taking advantage of this superb service for the last four months, but I keep losing the telephone number (well to be truthful, I keep losing my phone, which has the number in it…). With this in mind, I am putting simple steps here so that wherever I am I will be able to find my ordering instructions:

Step 1
Call 4008-517-517 from your home phone or mobile

Step 2
Press ’2′ for English (or press ’1′ for Chinese)

Step 3
If this is your first time calling, you need to register your address with them. So just tell them your address (they are speaking English after all). If it’s not your first time, they will tell you your phone number and address before proceeding to Step 4…

Step 4
Order your Big Mac, McChicken sandwich or whatever other delicious food that you want!

That’s it! They will deliver it in between 30-45mins and it’s (usually) warm-hot. Delivery charge is 7rmb. The service is 24 hours a day and follows the ‘breakfast menu / daytime menu’ times of the normal McDonald’s (I don’t know what they are as I don’t tend to wake up before ‘daytime menu’ begins :E ).

*Update* – The McDonald’s delivery number is the same for the whole of China, so if you’re in Beijing, Guangzhou or Shenzhen just follow the same instructions to order McDonald’s delivery! Enjoy!

See also: How to order KFC delivery in Shanghai!

Food crisis

Our house is currently in the grip of a food crisis.

It began yesterday morning, when we ordered delivery from McDonalds (we were recovering from a particularly havoc-filled night). As we sat eating our Big Macs and chicken nuggets, a strange feeling of ‘wrong’ filled the room. It was like the end of a Japanese horror movie, where the ‘ghost’ which has been following the 7 year-old girl around is finally revealed.

The nugget that I was eating did not feel like a nugget should feel. It was too soft, too moist…too liquidy. I looked over at my partner-in-fast-food, and he knew what I was thinking. Actually, he was one step ahead of me, as he was already on his way to the bathroom to throw up. When he was done, I shoved past him and threw up too.

McDonald’s had made us sick. It was a betrayal of truly epic proportions. It felt like my parents had killed my twin brother and then slowly fed him to me over the course of several years, only much more upsetting. I can’t think about eating McDonald’s now without gagging. This may be permanent.

For the last 24 hours we’ve been coming to terms with the ‘dodgy dinner’. What if we can never eat McDonald’s again? We tried to cook some hash browns tonight in the microwave…but they were frozen in the middle and soggy on the outside. And tasted like dirt. You can’t recreate what McDo offers.

Now we need to know – what do normal people eat on a daily basis? What are our food options? What taste as good at 10am as it does at lunch time as it does at midnight? What is your go-to food?

It feels like I lost a friend yesterday. I’m hollow, empty. What is the point of living day to day with this feeling? I decided to find out how long I was going to be around for, and so did…

Life Expectancy Calculator – 85.5 years

…and got the horrible news that I would be alive for another 21700 days (approximately). Unless we can find some great new foods (and fast!), I think it will be substantially less than that…

Recipe: Reheating a Mcdonald’s Cheeseburger with a Foreman Grill

Many people buy McDonald’s (should that be McDonald’s's?) delicious food when their blood alcohol content is around 0.65, but the next day are left with the sneaky ‘extra’ cheesburger (the one that you eyes wanted but your belly couldn’t take) left sitting confined in its brown paper cell.

Today, I’m going to let you into a secret, previously hidden in the world of professional chefs, which will let you take that drab, limp, lifeless bread and beef patty combo and turn it into the hangover meal that it always dreamed of being!

Recipe – McDonald’s's’s Cheesburger

Ingredients
1 McDonald’s cheesburger (14-20hrs old)
1 Foreman Grill

Directions

First locate your burger. If you can’t find it, it’s probably underneath the beer cans on your coffee table. If not there, check the bin (it’s easy to throw single burgers away when cleaning up after a McDo binge).

Now prepare your burger for cooking. Be careful to remove all paper packaging BEFORE cooking, as this can seriously affect the taste of the burger (and it can also turn your kitchen into the set of Backdraft).

Now preheat your grill by plugging it in and shutting the lid. Foreman experts will know that there is no temperature setting on this, the red model, and so just wait until the little orange light turns off (DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP).

This step is optional, but I always like to test the temperature of the grill by placing the tip of my tongue on the grill lid and holding it there for around 6-9 seconds. If you can smell the feint odor of burning hair or skin, the grill is ready to go!

Now place your prepared burger on your heated Foreman grill. It should be as central as possible (to take advantage of the vertical grill-lines) and attempt to position the cheese corners so that they point to around 5:20 (am or pm).

Using the handle of the grill, compact the burger from a top to bottom (12 to 6, North to South, Up to Down, There to Here) manner. Make the grill earn its corn, but don’t squash it down too hard, or you will end up with a McSmoothie.

After roughly 4 minutes and 17 seconds, remove the burger from the grill (remembering to lift the lid first!). Repeat from Step 5 if required. Serve on a fresh piece of kitchen roll and don’t forget – throw out that skanky pickled gherkin before taking a bite!