McDonald’s Restaurant – Southwest Chicken Salad Review

Restaurant: McDonald’s Restaurant – Southwest Chicken Salad Review
Cuisine: American/Fast Food
Last visited: June 21, 2010
Location: Burnaby, BC
Address: 4410 Still Creek Drive (Burnaby North)
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: n/a
Service: n/a
Ambiance: 5 (for McDonald’s)
Overall: n/a
Additional comments:

• Review only for Southwest Chicken Salad
• Started in the States
• Special summer salad
• Crispy or grilled
• $6.79 + taxes
• Nice McDonald’s with tv and a few leather lazy boy’s upstairs
• Next to McDonald’s Restaurant headquarters
• Only available for limited of time
• 50% off coupon until July 13

**Recommendations: If you’re going to try it then order the Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad with extra zesty chili-lime glaze (dressing optional)

This review is for the new Southwest Salad available at participating McDonald’s restaurants in Canada and the US. I was invited for a special tasting session of the Southwest Salad and therefore the salads I tried were complimentary. There were no expectations from McDonald’s and I am free to write and express my true opinions.

The Southwest Salad is new to the menu at McDonald’s in Vancouver and is available for a limited time only. It comes with either crispy or grilled chicken, tri-colour tortilla strips and Renee’s Southwest dressing.

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On the table:

**Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad – 4/6

• Southwest salad with fire-roasted corn, black beans, red peppers, red onions, cheddar cheese, tri-colour tortilla strips and grilled chicken $6.79
• 340 calories, 12g fat (no dressing)

It came with a package of these tri-coloured tortilla strips.

Also with Renee’s Southwest Ranch dressing (160 cal 16g fat… not sure for how many servings) It’s a rich creamy sour cream based salad dressing. It tastes more like a sweeter Ranch with taco seasoning than sour cream and wasn’t too tangy. I actually would rather have sour cream than this dressing. The salad didn’t need this dressing.

• I actually really liked the salad and it’s pretty much a taco salad. I liked it without the salad dressing because the chili lime glaze was flavourful enough on it’s own.
• I’m not sure if they always load it with this many ingredients, but if they do then it’s a pretty solid McDonald’s salad.
• The salad had lots of freshly sliced red peppers and it was all in all a very crunchy salad especially with the tortilla chips.
• I would have preferred some freshly diced tomatoes. The salad had tomatoes but it was mixed in this pre-packaged like salsa of Pablano peppers and cilantro. It was randomly found in parts of the salad and it was weird. It was like very itty bitty mushy tomato skins and mushy pablano pepers and neither had any flavour except for the taste of packaged cilantro. I could have used without this… they don’t give you much of it anyways so you don’t really notice it.

• The star of the salad: The chili lime glaze! It’s very flavourful and that’s why I didn’t need the dressing. The dressing just made it more mild because they glaze is surprisingly spicy.
• It has quite the kick, but it’s an addicting spicy. I had to ask for more because I was using that as the dressing for the salad. They need more of this sauce on the salad.

• It tastes like a tangy taco seasoning glaze but I tasted way more of the chili than I did the lime. It has a salty peppery kick with lots of paprika in it. It’s like a spicy Mexican barbeque sauce. My nose actually started running half way through and I like and can handle my spice! I liked it!

• The corn was “fire roasted” and although I could see the charcoal marks I couldn’t taste the smokey flavour. It was actually a bit mushy and didn’t have much corn flavour. It’s almost like how frozen corn doesn’t carry much sweetness or flavour.
• The black beans are great, but I wish they diced the red onions because it was a bit hard to eat as rings. Nice for presentation I guess.

Southwest Crispy Chicken Salad – 3/6

• Southwest salad with fire-roasted corn, black beans, red peppers, re onions, cheddar cheese, tri-colour tortilla strips and grilled chicken $6.79
• 420 calories, 19g fat (no dressing)
• I prefer the grilled over the crispy… not because it’s healthier but because I couldn’t taste the chili lime glaze at all in this.
• All I could taste was the seasoning from the crispy batter. It overpowered the glaze and was a bit too salty.
• The fried chicken adds extra crunch but the salad was crunchy enough with the tortilla chips so I didn’t find the added crispiness necessary.
• Besides the star of the show is the chili lime glaze so I wanted to taste that.

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