It’s Back, but Was It Worth the Wait?

What happened to this sandwich? The McRib is one of McDonald’s specialty sandwiches, one of the few the chain offers (and, even rarer, one it offers with any kind of regularity). McDonald’s is not generally known as risk takers. Unlike their various competitors (Wendy’s, Arbys, et al), Mickey D’s doesn’t generally do specialty offers. They have their standard menu, built on a few combinations of standard ingredients (burger patties, chicken patties, various toppings) and everything they offer comes from that pool of ingredients. Their menu is built on the same ingredients, over and over, so that everything gets used up and costs are kept down. Adding something new into the mix changes that formula and threatens to throw off the bottom line.

The McRib is such an outlier because, unlike most of McDonald’s rare specialty offerings (like, say, the Chicken Big Mac) it doesn’t use any of the same, common ingredients. It has its own, elongated bun and its own pork patty. Yes, it has BBQ sauce on it, and McDonald’s does offer tubs of BBQ for dipping nuggets, but McDonald’s sandwiches don’t traditionally have BBQ on them, so this is a change of pace for the restaurant as well. The only toppings on this sandwich that work with the traditional offerings are the onions and pickles. Everything else is outside the norm.

Because of this, the McRib is a beloved fan favorite. Offered sporadically, and seemingly at random, McDonald’s only pork sandwich has a cult following, with fans turning out in droves to get this limited item whenever it’s available. It can be months, or even years, before they see it again, so when they can get a McRib they’ll go for it. I’m even a fan, and when I hear the sandwich is around, yes, I’ll go and grab a McDonald’s meal (even when I now feel like the restaurant is no longer worth the price of admission).

And so we come to today, where the McRib is back (at least in my region) and I made the trip to my local McDonald’s to sample this limited offering once more. And, I have to say, it failed. I obviously only have my local restaurant to feed from, so my data mix is limited. I’m in a small town now, and we have but one McDonalds; if I still lived in a bigger city I could sample a few other locations to see if my experience with this sandwich was the norm now or an outlier. But considering McDonald’s has a standardized way they make all their food, and that everything is supposed to meet that same standard every time, I have to wonder if, somehow, McDonald’s has fucked up their best, seasonal item.

The sandwich, at first glance, seemed the same as always. The McRib is built from its seasoned boneless pork dipped in a tangy BBQ sauce, topped with slivered onions and crunchy pickles, all served on a toasted homestyle bun (as per the McDonald’s website). That was all here, although I will immediately note that the sandwich I got was very sparing with the slivered onions, and I didn’t even see the pickles on there (let alone taste them once I got into eating the sandwich). It looked like a McRib, but the first bite showed something was off.

The flavor of the sandwich was muted, even bland. I’m not going to argue that McDonald’s is generally overly flavorful; the fast food restaurant serves the most middle-of-the-road food you can get anywhere. That’s how they operate, and it’s what people know to expect. But even by those standard’s, 2024’s version of the McRib is incredibly boring and one-note. The patty doesn’t taste like much of anything, just a flavorless blob of vaguely pork-like product, and the bun is just as flavorless and dead.

I think the reason why people like this sandwich (I know it’s why I do) is the combination of the soft meat and bun accented by the sweet tang of the sauce and the sharp bite of the pickles and onions. And that is where my local restaurant failed: there wasn’t enough of any of the toppings on the sandwich. For starters, as noted above, my McRib was sorely lacking in onions and pickles. I had three slivers of onion total and I didn’t see any pickles on there at all. Maybe they were out of sliced pickles (although I doubt it since the pickles are on everything so you know they have to have a ton), but my suspicion is more that the restaurant didn’t care and didn’t throw enough on.

I have that suspicion because the big selling point of the sandwich, the sauce, was barely there at all. The McRib should be dripping with sauce. It should dribble off the sandwich. It should coat your hands. It should have a pool in the box. This should be a BBQ sandwich, with a side of pork. That’s how it’s been in years past. The McRib I got had the thinnest glaze of sauce I’d ever had on the sandwich before and it left the offering with barely any flavor at all. The whole eating experience, because of that, was just sad.

Most of what I expected from the McRib was still there. The bun was still pillowy soft, as was the weird pork patty. Texture wise, barring the lack of onion crunch, the sandwich was as I expected it. But the flavor wasn’t there, and this is a flavor-forward sandwich. Without that appealing tang, the sharp and sweet and salt that makes the McRib what it should be, it’s just a plain and boring sandwich. This McRib wasn’t a special seasonal offering; it was a below average offering, even by McDonald’s standards.

So yes, I want to chalk this up to my restaurant being bad and failing to make a good McRib. Looking online, though, it seems like my experience with the sandwich may be the norm now. Many have noted, on various reddit threads, that the sandwich seems sad, boring, with barely any sauce, onions, or pickles. It feels like McDonald’s has willingly fucked with their formula, cutting costs on one of their most beloved seasonal offerings because fans will always come back for it. They’ve seemingly ruined the experience, and the sandwich just isn’t the same.

Truly, this was a bad sandwich, and if what I’m seeing online is accurate, this is going to be way of the McRib from now on. If that’s the case, that’s sad. But worse, it means I have one less specialty sandwich I’m going to look forward to from now on. Hopefully this is an anomaly, just a few bad restaurants and not the way of it from now on. Because if it’s not, this was the last McRib I’m ever going to get.