It’s lunchtime. You’re stepping away from your desk for a few minutes for your famously short and inadequate break. Time to pick up something easy and convenient that is portable, requires no cutlery, crockery or major expense – a small amount of something tasty between two slices of bread, perhaps, that is all of the above and widely available in all parts of town. Everyone has their own idea of a bargain and a wedge of cheese and some sharp, crunchy pickle shoved between two slices of wholemeal for about £2.00 is fair enough for most.
Unless you are stupidly rich and unable to understand how to eat properly. In which case, go to Selfridges and order their new McDonald sandwich, yours for £85.00. It’s a sandwich that has been specially commissioned by the Selfridges food and catering director Ewan Venters and created by Selfridges chef Scott McDonald. Why the hell is a sandwich worth £85.00? Not because it’s going to taste so good it’ll make you spread your very own mayonnaise in your pants but because it’s a selection of the world’s most expensive ingredients all lumped together between two slices of pricey bread that is only going to appeal to the very rich and the very inexperienced gourmet gastro-wannabe.
For £85.00 surely it should be pretty tasty? Well… no. The McDonald sandwich filling is as follows: Wagyu beef, fresh lobe foie gras, black truffle mayonnaise, brie de meaux, rocket, red pepper and mustard confit and English plum tomatoes. That’s a sandwich containing beef, pate, mayonnaise, cheese, salad and mustard. Yeah, sure, every ingredient individually is special – the Wagyu beef is Japanese, from cows fed a special diet and massaged regularly in rice wine to tenderise their meat, there are black truffles and foie gras, fancy cheese and nice tomatoes that would all be lovely on their own or as the main feature of a dish. But to shove all these ingredients together and serve them up on bread is somewhat sacrilegious, not to mention a bit gross. Stick to a tuna salad roll from the canteen and save your cash for a proper dinner.
If any readers are considering assembling their own McDonald sandwich, please let us know how it tastes and what it costs when normal people make a beef, pate, cheese and mayo sandwich. Londonist regrets we are unable to refund costs of material and / or labour if it is shit.
