Snack Review: McDonald’s McCafe Cappuccino

I hate leaving the big city. As soon as I am outside walking distance to a Thai restaurant, a bookstore, and a cappuccino bar, I start to feel queasy and uncomfortable.

That list might seem odd if you know I am a regular tea drinker and only have coffee when I have a particular need for something stronger. But it actually makes sense. It’s not just that coffee shops are an infallible symptom of the presence of civilized life. It’s also that I don’t like coffee enough – or maybe, am not addicted enough – to drink terrible coffee.

Unfortunately, when I want to get from one city to another, there is often non-city in between. And even I sometimes go for a weekend at the beach, although it is always a beach town with a Thai restaurant, a good bookstore, and plenty of coffee bars. (Hello, Rehoboth, DE! Love you!)

Well, there I was, on a recent late season drive, after a night of poor sleep, heading into a sort of monsoon, anxious about what a lousy and yet expensive weekend this was going to be. And man, did I need a Starbucks.

As I have mentioned, although I had to admit their new smoothies are good, I don’t even like Starbucks coffee. But usually, what else are you going to do? Out there among the corn fields or whatever they were – there were even cows - there was not even a Starbucks, and I thought, this is exactly why it is a bad idea to leave the city.

At that very moment, what should Fate present but a billboard for McDonald’s – advertising their new McCafe. I vaguely remembered reading that McDonald’s was going to start offering espresso drinks, but it had made little impression on me. I basically never go to McDonald’s – I have nothing against crummy snacks but I do have something against crummy food. Once every few years I have some french fries there in a desperate circumstance, but that’s it. So the absurd notion that they now had cappuccino was irrelevant to me.

Until now. Given my simultaneous need for a coffee and for some plumbing facilities, it was Meant to Be. We pulled off the road.

There was no line and the drink was made very quickly – I didn’t get to see exactly what the woman was doing but I assume it involved pre-ground bean packets. The rest of the service was less impressive – I had to ask for sugar, and I had to stir it in with a straw.

OK, here is the conclusion that is so surprising that I have been beating around the bush rather than get to it: contrary to my snooty expectations, this was very far from the worst cup of cappuccino that I have had.

In fact, it was really pretty good. It actually had coffee flavor. Tragically, in this world that’s so full of allegedly fancy coffee, that is worth mentioning. It’s not just a murky warm milk drink, like you get at those major chains and major-chain-imitators that roast their beans to such a crisp that all the more delicate flavors are destroyed, leaving little besides a vague or not-so-vague bitterness. Instead, this drink had those flavors that coffee smells like but so often, disappointingly, doesn’t taste like.

(Feel that wobbling? It’s my Italian grandmother spinning in her grave.)

I am so confused and disoriented to be typing this: I would definitely drink this again. I might even drink this rather than risk an unknown local coffee bar in a strange place. Oh no – I might even want to know how it goes with one of their apple pies! I had forgotten about their apple pies.

It’s a frightening slippery slope I’m at the top of. Wave to me as I slide by….

• McDonald’s Website

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