We recently made some trips to McDonald’s to try the new premium McWraps and the breakfast menu offerings available after midnight.
I had been quite curious about the Premium Chicken McWraps. I really enjoyed Wendy’s Chicken Flatbreads, and the McDonald’s version seemed to be in direct competition, with offerings of sliced grilled chicken, a less carb heavy exterior, and using spring mix salad and fresh vegetables rather than the standard iceberg lettuce.
When I saw the commercials on TV, the two things that stood out were how incredibly big the wrap looked and that they seemed to be emphasizing fresh slices of cucumbers (whereas Wendy’s thing was fresh slices of tomatoes).
McDonald’s offers the wraps in three flavors (sweet chili, bacon, and ranch). And for each one, you can choose either grilled or crispy chicken. Surprisingly, the price remains the same for all options ($3.99).
Sweet Chili Grilled Chicken McWrap
One thing I immediately liked was the container the wrap came in. It breaks in half, allowing you easy access to the top half, with the bottom half safely covered to prevent it from leaking onto your clothes. It’s definitely a good concept if you’re planning on eating this in the car.
After I removed the top wrap, I was surprised to see a ton of tortilla with no ingredients in sight. Everything seemed to be sitting at the bottom of the wrap.
So then I opened the entire thing up, and found the ingredients sitting at the bottom. And while I know that the commercials often exaggerate the size and look of these sandwiches, I was still shocked by what I saw.
Three measly strips of chicken? And iceberg lettuce? Where were the spring mix greens I was promised? And the fresh cucumber slices? Instead there was only one “cucumber” slice which was clearly a pickle once I tasted it.
The sweet chili sauce was also cloyingly sweet and not very enjoyable.
If we had eaten this in the store, I likely would have marched over and said something because I was pretty pissed after seeing this offering.
Bacon and Crispy Chicken McWrap
For our second wrap, we chose to go the unhealthy route, opting for fried chicken strips and bacon. I almost sighed with relief when I opened this one up and saw that it was much fuller than the other one.
You could already see the chicken and the spring mix salad upon opening the container. So there is supposed to be a spring mix salad. I’m guessing then that whoever made the first one just completely forgot.
The amount of ingredients was clearly fuller than the sweet chili one, covering most of the wrap. However, the “cucumber” again was still a pickle. I only keep griping about this because for weeks after, I kept seeing sponsored tweets by McDonald’s saying “Do you know our new chicken wraps include fresh cucumbers?” And I kept silently screaming back “No they don’t!!” I actually enjoy pickles, but it just really annoys me that they are advertising fresh cucumbers and I’ve yet to see one in one of these wraps.
There was only a single thin strip of bacon. I had hoped there would be more, especially since the Wendy’s Asiago Ranch has 3 strips. I am happy to see that they didn’t charge extra for the bacon though.
Overall, this sandwich was alright. I’m not really a fan of tortillas, and McDonald’s version doesn’t stray very far from your standard fast food tortilla offering. The chicken was moist and crisp and I enjoyed the spring mix, but I didn’t love the wrap enough to order it again.
Breakfast After Midnight
Recently, McDonald’s began rolling out breakfast after midnight in select markets and it has reached San Diego. I saw commercials and was immediately excited. I’ve never understood why McDonald’s has to stop serving their popular breakfast menu in the morning. There have been so many times I’ve wanted a hash brown with my lunch or dinner.
While eating at midnight is not something I really indulge in much anymore, I guess it’s better than only having the menu during breakfast hours, and maybe if the midnight campaign is successful, they’ll eventually offer it all day. I can say that I bet this campaign is quite popular with the college crowd. I distinctly remember a few occasions when I was craving McDonald’s hash browns and sausage McMuffins after midnight and asking the poor employees why they didn’t offer it.
Anyway, it actually took us a while to try this out. We saw the campaign, and planned it in our schedule, but every time that day rolled around, we were too lazy to leave the house after midnight to go to McDonald’s. After three failed attempts, I finally dragged DH out.
While the entire breakfast menu is not offered, there are most of the classics including the McMuffin sandwiches, hash browns, and pancakes.
Sausage Egg McMuffin
We ordered the classic sausage egg McMuffin. We also ordered way too many hash browns, so I got creative and stuck two halves into my McMuffin sandwich.
Hash Browns
DH suddenly got ravenous during the ordering and requested three of these. I don’t even want to think about the calorie count.
Pancakes
I’ve never had the pancakes here and decided to try them out. They smelled strongly of maple syrup, in an artificial sort of way. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy these at all. The artificial maple taste was very present in the pancakes even before I added any syrup.
Overall, we were excited to see breakfast offered at hours beyond breakfast. Since we don’t do a lot of eating after midnight, I’m not sure how often we’ll be indulging in this but I like the concept. Hopefully this will push McDonald’s towards offering a limited breakfast menu all day like some other fast food chains.
My experience with the chicken wrap was substantially different from yours. I wanted that bacon ranch wrap (grilled) really bad, but I’m so picky about ranch that I ordered it with no sauce and took it home to add proper ranch dressing (Read: hidden valley LOL) …. anyway, I love them. I have to get one every couple of weeks now, they’re so perfect. They’ve always been stuffed full of chicken and greens – once there was iceberg, but it was one time out of probably 10 that I’ve had them. I think you have a crappy McDonalds near your house 🙁 I would have a FIT about the pickle, though – I hate pickles LOL
yeah, I have definitely noticed that diff locations produce diff product even though it should be the same. This McD usually has pretty good food so I was surprised they messed up so badly on the wrap
I have ordered the chicken ranch premium wrap 5 times now and have loved it every time. It has been very consistent and full, I also receive actual cucumbers every time. Maybe new employees confusing the require ingredients, maybe ran out of cucumbers? Maybe just plain don’t care! Sorry you had a bad experience, but the chicken ranch one is great!
I’m glad to hear you had good experiences. I’m going to try it out again soon.
My fiance really loves their “snack wraps”, which they’ve had for a while. Those are just a smaller tortilla, iceberg lettuce, some shredded cheese, chicken and whatever sauce. They’re pretty good if that’s what you’re expecting.
But I have to agree with you about these new wraps–they’re nowhere near as good as I want them to be. We did get actual pieces of cucumbers in ours, though (I hate pickles, so I’m glad we didn’t get any). But the wrap is so large and the amount of food inside doesn’t really match up.
Interesting. Good to know they are serving cucumbers somewhere. Now if only it was consistent everywhere. I forgot about the snack wraps. I used to like them too!
I guess I was lucky when I went to get the sweet chili grilled chicken mcwrap the other day. It was full all the way to the top. Wasn’t too fond of it though because I didn’t know they would use mayo in the wrap to. Might be better without it.
Mayo? Interesting. My chili one did not have mayo.
THANKS for posting and letting us know how the wraps “really” are. I see commercials ALL the time and now I know the truth. So weird though… why misrepresent? Regardless, I, too, still eat at McDs — addicted to their coffee — and the occasional indulgence of fries, cookies, parfaits and their breakfast!
Glad to be of help. I still will go to McD’s too, just not for the wraps.
Nice post! They’ve been promoting the heck outta these new wraps. And I agree with you on the their tortillas – really bad. I’m still a fan of their current McNuggets and fish filet specials though.
There’s still other stuff I get there too. The hash browns, fries, soft serve ice cream, chicken nuggets, etc. But yeah, I’ve seen the commercials constantly for the McWraps and was pretty disappointed.
I would be pissed if I got one of those wraps with “fresh cucumber” to only get a pickle. Especially since I don’t like pickles. Pickles do not equal cucumber! I’m glad to see they offer breakfast after midnight now, though I don’t really ever get to enjoy it.
Yeah, I don’t know if they are just not handling quality control right at each location or what. But it makes me annoyed every time I see the ads talking about fresh cucumbers. I’m excited by breakfast after midnight, but not sure how many times I’ll take advantage of it. Wish they had it when I was in college!
I had the sweet chili wrap awhile back. I thought it was nasty, blech. Everything sat at the bottom of the box. The chicken felt slimy too. You know what I miss? The salad shaker’s:)
I was really surprised at how much I disliked the sweet chili and I was thinking, how did this get through all their product testing?
mcd stops breakfast @ 9/10 bc they have limited space. they have to make burgers and chicken and fries.
what does ‘cloyingly sweet mean?
that wrap is a mess. the last time i at at mcd–in 98– i got a lopsided not fully cooked burger. i took a pic and wrote a letter and gave it ot that location as well as gave it to the mcd corp. ever since i have been receinving mcd coupons. i dont ea at mcd so i give the coupons to my nieces/nephews/
kirbie you should email this to mcd is what i am saying.
I know that is their explanation for why they stop serving breakfast, but other fast food burger places manage to offer breakfast all day along with the burgers, fries, etc, so I feel like it can be done.
Cloyingly sweet- excessive/sickenly sweet.