McDonald's Robbed Seven Countries. The Two Best Things It Took Leave First.

Here's the take, up front: the World Menu Heist is worth the trip for two burgers, and both of them are gone on 19 October. Everything that's easy to get right, the sides, the sauce and the McFlurry, sticks around until 16 November. McDonald's has the leaving order exactly backwards.

The menu went on sale on Tuesday 22 September. The press release promises "eight heisted fan favourites" and then lists nine, taken from seven countries. Here's all of it, and how long you've got.

Germany Put a Rösti in a Burger

The Big Rösti is the loudest thing on the menu. A British and Irish beef patty, a crispy potato rösti, streaky bacon, a cheese slice, baconnaise and cheese sauce, in a toasted glazed bun with sesame on top.

Anyone who's ever slid a hash brown into a McMuffin knows exactly where this idea came from, and Germany just did it properly with a rösti in a burger. It's two kinds of cheese, two kinds of bacon and two kinds of starch.

The worry is what isn't in it. There's no lettuce, no pickle, no onion, nothing sharp anywhere in the stack to cut through all that richness. That's either the whole point or the whole problem, and it's the question I most want answered before it goes.

Canada Sent the Better-Designed One

The Maple & Cheddar Chicken is a crispy chicken breast fillet with cheddar, onions two ways, lettuce and tomato, a mustard maple sauce and a citrus mayo, in a poppy and sesame seed bun.

Read that list again and compare it with the Big Rösti. Every sweet thing has something pulling against it. The maple gets mustard, the mayo gets citrus, and the fried fillet gets lettuce and tomato. Somebody balanced this burger on paper before it went anywhere near a kitchen.

Sweet maple on fried chicken isn't a gimmick, either. It's chicken and waffles with syrup, a combination North America settled decades ago. If I had to bet on one item from this menu deserving a permanent spot, it's this one, and it has the same four weeks as the rösti.

The Sides Get the Long Run

Mac & Cheese Triangles come from the UAE and they're back for a second year, after last year's World Menu Heist. Macaroni in cheddar sauce, crumbed and fried into triangles, with a ketchup dip.

McDonald's calls the last run "hugely successful", and a return is the closest thing this menu has to a verdict. Nothing else here has already been tested on British customers.

Paprika McShaker Fries are from the Netherlands. They're the same fries in a shaker bag with a sachet of smoky paprika seasoning. Tip it in, shake, done.

It's the lowest-risk item on the menu, because the fries underneath haven't changed. Australia runs the same shaker format with a Vegemite sachet, which tells you how far the idea can be pushed. Paprika is a much safer bet than that.

The Sauce a Cartoon Made Famous

Szechuan Sauce is credited to China. It's a sweet and savoury dip with a mild Szechuan pepper heat. Szechuan pepper isn't really a chilli; it's a tingle rather than a burn.

In Britain it's famous for a different reason. McDonald's first sold a Szechuan dip in 1998 to promote Disney's Mulan, and it would have stayed forgotten if Rick and Morty hadn't built a 2017 episode around wanting it back. The one-day American return that October didn't have nearly enough sauce for the crowds, and it came back across the US in 2018.

So this is the most famous item on the menu, and almost nobody in the UK knows what it actually tastes like. That makes it the one where a vote tells you the most.

Canada Again, for Pudding

The S'mores McFlurry is soft dairy ice cream with marshmallows, biscuit crumb and chocolate sauce. A proper s'more uses graham crackers, which Britain doesn't really sell, so the biscuit crumb is doing that job here.

It's the safest item on the menu. Marshmallow, chocolate and biscuit in ice cream is hard to get badly wrong, and that's why it sits at the back.

The Three Without Cards

Australia sent two breakfast items, the Chicken & Egg McMuffin and the Chicken and Bacon McMuffin, and India sent Guava x Sprite Zero, which is Sprite Zero with guava-flavoured syrup over ice. McDonald's hasn't said what goes in either McMuffin beyond the names, so they'll get cards once that's clear.

Every Item and When It Goes

Call It Before 19 October

The two burgers are the reason this menu is interesting and they're on the shortest clock. In under three weeks the rösti and the maple chicken are back where they came from, and whatever anyone thought of them goes with them unless it's written down.

The cards above are live and they write straight to the UK fast food ranking, settled by people who actually ate the thing.

So settle it: rösti or maple?

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