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Thursday, July 30, 2015

McDonals - Gandhinagar, Adyar

McDonalds

Right behind the Gandhinagar Bus terminus, Adyar

About 10 - 12 bloggers were invited to their branch in Adyar for a  new launch pre-presentation. 

Right from the PR team constantly being in touch with us to be available at the venue on time, to a lil' goof-up of making it a public event and appearing a couple of times in Newspapers, to wondering what is going to be so different from a regular hangout place which serves burgers and side-eats made up for a full-length movie

Finally, we were in for a surprise at this event. What we had in mind and what happened there were totally in contrast. There was vital info, interesting tit-bits, and lots of fun and here is how it all started.

The chef:  A special  mention about Swarup Solgaonkar, who is a Culinary Professional with over 18 years of experience is working as the Deputy General Manager for New Product Development at McDonald’s India. In his current role, the Chef is responsible for catering to the varied taste buds of McD’s customers with his unique and flavorful recipes. Insightful information was shared about how McD is so quality conscious when it comes to choosing vendors, the quality of  raw materials they source and a few hundreds of checks that are in place at different stages.
He shot a few questions at us and in the process was also giving us many interesting facts
e.g., about the type of eggs and yolk color
 Que: Why the yolk inside certain eggs are in different color (pale yellow to dark orange)?
 Ans: The type of feed the hen is feed determines the yolk color
 

The egg inside McEggTM is steamed and not cooked with oil. They have a special technique to mix up the yolk inside the egg and then cook it for about 2.5 mins inside a round ring on a pan. Some butter on the buns and toasted golden brown, the round steamed egg laid on top, some all spice power, pepper and salt and viola! the McEgg is ready to be served.
Bloggers/reviewers attentively listening to what the Chef had to say about the new McEggTM
  
It was time for some fun and we were given an opportunity to make our own burgers

Task: To make the most creative and tastiest burger with the choice of buns, patties, sauces and other items available in 20 minutes.
The whole array of the different types of buns, sauces, veggies, patties, is what you see below





  


There was chaos, mayhem and in the end of it all a burger each from the teams/individuals to be presented to the chef to judge based on timing, taste and overall presentation
Food: The bun was intact, soft and non-crumbly, most of the sauces tasted good and I personally loved the chipotle and tom mayo sauce.  The McSpicy chicken patty was so juicy and loved every bit of it. 
Archana Mohta, the Communications Manager McD, took us through a presentation of how they take the well-being of customers very seriously and have worked hard on their recipes and menu choices to reduce fat, salt and sugar.

They started their back-end work around 2013 to reduce sodium across various products and today they have brought down the sodium content across sauces, buns and McNuggets by 10%; and in fries by 20%.  They also have reduced oil content in the sauces from 67 to 25% bringing down the calorie by up to 40% . They serve ‘Low Fat Mayo’ across all their restaurants • Even the dairy products of soft-serves have less than 3% fat.This is really good news

The Desi source: We were told that their vendors of chicken need to undergo 2000 checks in all to confirm that the quality is the best and there is no compromise anywhere
The vegetables like tomatoes, onions, potatoes, iceberg lettuce etc. are locally grown and are supplied to the different branches
The breads also come from their baking units in noida and bangalore (if it is south) to retain the freshness


 The final presentation of the burgers made by teams or individuals to be judged by the Chef Swarup
The bloggers/reviewers team finally got to choose their order of burgers and drinks for lunch




The whole team of bloggers, who participated in the "burger making contest". The duo above  won the "best burger" award for the combo and the taste.
 
This lill creation of mine won me the "creative presentation" award. I cursed myself for not having added more of the sauce as it didn't taste well as I expected. Nevertheless, there were a few more awards and happy faces duly rewarded with gift coupons to be redeemed on next purchases
 
Kitchen tour: Was one of the few privileged to be taken on tour of their kitchen (were asked to remove watches, bands etc before entering). Were taken around by the asst.store manager and were explained about the various processes and how each of them is process driven with checklists being filled up every now and then. I was surprised to know that the patties which are made ready and kept in warmers at certain temperature setting are disposed the moment the counter reading goes zero. A new batch of patties are fried and lined up back again (impressed!). The cold storage, friers, assembly line is all so clean and hygienic.

Verdict: McD is not just about happy meals and toys. There were a lot of takeaways in terms  knowledge, information, food with a lot of fun. Yes, it was a very interesting and satisfying experience and "I am loving it".

Will Mc(Egg) Donalds be a hit or miss, lets wait and see!


1 comment:

  1. Excellent blogs!!!!you have for sharing them effect information..we developer very learning to easy


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