When it comes to McDonald's fast food “pies” (I use the quotes on purpose there because what McDonald's serves I've always regarded as closer to Hot Pockets than pies) fried is better than baked and the special fillings are better than the standard old apple.
I actually liked the Strawberry and Creme one that they offered for a limited time earlier this year, and don't get me started on the sublime haupia pies that Hawaiian McDonald's sell on the islands, pies that were not only deep fried to bubbled, blistered crispiness but luscious when that creamy coconut pudding oozed out from the center.
We'll never see the haupia pie offered here on the mainland. Instead we get special pies like the ones the Golden Arches are offering right now. It's called the “Holiday Pie”, a name so vague that you will, like I did, ask the McDonald's order taker to explain what's in it.
“Vanilla custard,” he'll say.
]
Is it really? Well, it's vanilla-colored. It's pasty. It doesn't have
much of an egg or milk flavor. If it's anything at all, it's vanilla pudding,
though that's still stretching it. The filling is more like a faintly
sweet, starch-thickened, indiscriminate goo.
But sampling this
pie, I have to revise my earlier statement: since it's got rainbow
sprinkles and tastes as if the crust were coated in sugary glaze, what we
have here is no longer a glorified Hot Pocket but an oversized and bloated Pop
Tart.
Follow Stick a Fork In It on Twitter @ocweeklyfood or on Facebook! And don't forget to download our free Best Of App here!
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.