McDonald's: A Hamburger by Any Other Name?

Over coffee with Tom Barlow, former fellow blogger from my Blogging Ohio days, the subject of McDonald's came up. He mentioned that he came across a McDonald's menu from India when he was doing a blog for his new digs at Blogging Stocks. That caught my attention.

I've been to McDonald's in India, Taiwan and Singapore. Not one for American fast food eating as a rule, there is something comforting about going to a place that looks familiar when one is living or traveling overseas. However, despite the fact that McDonald's may look the same, what each serves up is quite different than the U.S. version when you consider that it's the hamburger that put McDonald's at the top of America's fast food nation pile. In Asia, if there are hamburgers, sometimes it's a special style sauce or some McDonald's don't serve hamburgers at all.

In India, for example, you'll be hard pressed to find a McDonald's that serves hamburgers. I don't think any of them do. In Singapore hamburgers may or may not be on the menu depending where in the city the restaurant is located. There are chicken burgers galore however. The special sauces appeal to the palates of the people who mostly live in that particular country. In Taiwan, it's possible to get corn soup as a side order. If you want to get the one menu item that tastes like it's been cooked up in the U.S., French fries are universal. The largest McDonald's I was ever in was in Bejing, China. When traveling, besides the French fries, you can count on McDonald's for a clean toilet. At least, that's been my experience. Thanks to Eric Deamer on Flickr for his shot of a McDonald's menu in Taiwan.

Filed under: Business, Food and Drink, Asia, India, Singapore, Taiwan