'Mozzarella' Stick Scandal Plagues McDonald's

If you’re a McDonald’s fan like I am, you would know that the fast food giant recently introduced a new menu item to its lineup: the mozzarella stick.

Coincidentally, I am also a fan of the mozzarella stick so it seemed like this was a match made in heaven.

Instead of just picking up my usual fare at McD’s (a McDouble, no ketchup, mustard or onions; add Big Mac sauce) and removing the bun, I decided to test drive the “mozzarella” sticks too — I think they run 3 for $1.

I was disappointed as there was no mozzarella inside the “stick.” It was basically a fried hollow straw-like food. I chalked it up to some anomaly and figured this new test food would go the way of the McD.L.T. (Who remembers that?!?)

News reports are surfacing that my mozzarella stick experience was not unique. “Dozens of customers have posted images of the hollowed-out, sad, in-name-only breaded cheese items.”

So where’s the cheese in my mozzarella sticks, McDonald’s? pic.twitter.com/NaU1s1ueS4

— Minsun Dimsum (@careless_seoul) January 17, 2016

Craving mozzarella sticks. Excited that @McDonalds has them! Just to get home to have hollow breading :( #sad pic.twitter.com/ngnLG7Kx8K — Amber (@Heyamber021) January 26, 2016

Over at Deadspin, writer Will Gordon was lucky enough to get some sticks with mozzarella included. He describes, since I can only imagine: “The cheese is more rubbery than melty, and it can be stretched out about a foot before breaking, if you’re gentle and disgusting. The flavor is fairly mild, which is cool—better safe than sorry at this end of the dairy spectrum. No need to get real ambitious, especially since even real mozzarella’s not one of your more aggressive cheeses. It’s not as salty as I’d feared, with the major flavor being a creamy sweetness reminiscent of store-brand vanilla yogurt.”

McDonald’s is aware of the problem. The company released a statement: “We are aware of a low volume of guest concerns about our Mozzarella Cheese Sticks. In these instances, we believe the cheese melted out during the baking process in our kitchens and shouldn’t have been served. We apologize to any customers who may have been affected. We are working to fix this in our restaurants.”

How do you know the cheese has melted out of the “stick”? This seems like a fast food Schrodinger’s cat situation.

I hope McDonald’s figures out how to prepare and deliver a complete mozzarella stick soon. People had such high hopes for low-cost comfort food.