Monday, November 14, 2011

McFlurry International - China 5

Tiramisu McFlurry, Shanghai, ChinaIn China, you can call 4008-517517 and get your fix of McDonald's delivered to your door, someone else's door, or a street corner at 04:00am. Even better, avoid talking to anyone and order online in Chinese and English at 4008-517-517.cn with only a 7RMB delivery charge.

Màidāngláo (麦当劳) has a new McFlurry (麦旋风, mài xuànfēng) flavor and it is the Tiramisu McFlurry (提拉米苏麦旋风 Tílāmǐsū MàiXuànfēng) for only 10RMB. Crumbled Oreo cookies are mixed in the classic vanilla soft-serve with a thick coffee syrup swirl. At the standing McDonald's locations, you would be lucky if your McFlurry cup is filled to the halfway point, but when ordering for home delivery, the cup is almost full. The actual flavor did not fulfill its potential and could have benefited from using a vanilla cookie instead of a chocolate-based one to better capture the essence of tiramisu. This flavor combination would have been better suited for a "mocha" concept.

Here is a fun fact about the McDonald's hotline. The phone number uses a phonetic homonym. In Chinese, "517" or 五一七 (wǔ yāo qī) sounds close to 我要吃 (wǒ yào chī) or "I want to eat." "Yāo" is used instead of "yī" in oral conversation to clarify the number in a sequence of digits. So when you repeat the McDonald's phone number in Chinese, it sounds like you are saying "Wǒ yào chī, wǒ yào chī," or "I want to eat, I want to eat."

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