McCrap, Oui.
We are in France, the options for breakfast are €20 each at the hotel for a continental buffet with a bit of bacon and an egg as the cooked option. Screw that, living in Spain we get breakfast out for €3 each, for orange juice, coffee and a tostada. So looking online we find this bakers/sandwich place a 5 minute drive away. Looks like a Greggs in France we thought. We check out of the hotel, jump in the car and off we go. We find the badly signposted place, and end up parking in the shopping centre and walking there. In the queue, we realise it’s take out only – Not a problem.
We then notice the drinks range is rather limited. They offer zero drinks, neither hot nor cold. Now I cannot focus without a coffee, so this was a kick in the balls. Instead, we ordered a butty for lunch and paid, then left.
McDonalds In France
As we were in the car, cases etc all packed and we were kind of ‘on the road’, we decided to try find somewhere to have breakfast. In the distance was the golden arches, so my better half said ” let’s go to McDonalds, we know they serve coffee”. Parked in the car park, walked into the new Bordeaux place and it’s an on screen ordering system.
€5 for a breakfast consisting of 2 drinks and 2 food items, hey let’s give this a try. I opted for Orange Juice to start, Coffee as the drink. The main food item was a bacon, cheese and egg burger and the follow on item was a beef and bacon burger. We paid, came to a grand total for the both of us of €10. We were number 10 on the order display, top of the list so we stood and waited.
Service With No Smile
And waited and waited and while we waited we watched the young female server who was clearly not a happy bunny. She stomped about, shrugged her shoulders (in the French style, when they are not happy), pulled a face as long as the Maginot Line and everything that she handled she slammed onto the counter or into the bag for the customers orders.
She was also taking orders it seemed for the drive thru, which didn’t improve her attitude. We saw her colleague who was a guy in his twenties, preparing the burgers, taking them off the tray, wrapping them and placing them into the metal holding racks, ready for her to bag into orders. Now this should have been so damn straight forward, but NO. She then had to open up each and every burger, check what it was, then rewrap it before completing the order for the customer.
She place a tray on a counter, added a couple of juices, added the hot coffee I ordered and a water and tea bag for her indoors. Then she wandered off. Hey this might be ours I thought, after waiting 16 minutes. But she went to deal with a guy wanting a coffee at the coffee counter. Then she went to deal with a drive through order, before coming back to the counter we were waiting at. Well we waited, she bagged up another order ( again not ours ), so we asked what was happening, as number 10 was no longer on the display board.
A shrug of the shoulders, then words with the guy and she then flounced off, leaving us standing there like a couple of spare parts. A couple of minutes later she is back. Burgers are all opened, checked then tossed onto the tray. The said tray was slid in our direction until I said, I want hot coffee.
So she opens the lid, sticks her fingers into both cups, mutters something then walks off, muttering even more. She then returns and slides these 2 hot drinks across in our direction.
I don’t like McDonalds at the best of times, it is crap. It’s the food you eat at 2am after 20 pints when you find the local kebab shop or curry house is closed. Aside from that, when it comes to eating eggs, unless they are scrambled, I want a runny yolk. Poached, boiled, fried they need to be runny. So imagine my surprise, when this fresh made McBreakfast arrived and the egg was cold and hard. Not to worry, at least I had my bacon and beef burger to look forward to. Well, you know how these appear as images on the menu and display……. They look nothing like this.
Yes that was the sorry state of my burger. The bun was soggy, the filling was cold, this was how my food arrived, after being prepared minutes earlier.
