Until last year, the McRib was practically a cult item: hard to find, difficult to track down, and only available for a limited time. Like the Shamrock Shake, the McRib's sporadic, seemingly random availability only added to its appeal.
Then last year, McDonald's went big time with its McRib, and offered the sandwich in all its stores, across all its markets. McRib fans rejoiced, although it's always a bit sad when a limited food becomes readily available. It loses something, you know? Imagine how bored we would be of Pumpkin Spice Lattes if they were available year-round. (Which they totally could be, by the way. It's just a flavored syrup.)
For better or worse, McDonald's has announced that the McRib is returning to its old ways: it will be up to each franchise to decide whether to carry it, and when, making it once again a challenge to track down a McRib.
Economists have studied the availability of the McRib and found that in the past, it closely mirrored the price of pork. When pork prices fall far enough, McDonald's pushes the McRib to market. Once pork prices rise, the sandwich gets pulled. Maybe this latest move by McDonald's is simply an acknowledgment that the McRib is too expensive to produce for everyday use.
It must be said that objectively, the McRib is not very good. The fine-grained meat, pressed into a bizarre patty with mock rib shapes, is tasteless. The sauce - which is applied copiously - is too sweet. And the bun is almost nauseatingly soft, especially after it gets drenched in the sauce.
My theory is that part of what people love about the McRib is the way in which its texture is so divergent from the rest of the line-up at McDonald's. Whether you're eating a quarter pounder or a chicken nugget, it's all pretty much the same. The McRib is aggressively different, and it has that incredible "mess factor" to boot.
Image courtesy Flickr/calamity_hane
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