We had literally just crossed the border from Belgium into the Netherlands when we spotted a McDonald's and decided to stop. We were on our way from Bruges to Amsterdam to meet up with my parents, and we need to both charge the car and get some breakfast so we pulled over at a motorway services that had everything we needed.
I was excited that the McDonald's kiosk let us order both breakfast and lunch items since it was around 10:00 in the morning. We went a little crazy with our ordering!
I started with a breakfast sandwich which was a McMuffin BLT & Egg. This is exactly what it sounds like - a cross between a normal breakfast sandwich and a BLT! So on the English muffin was bacon, lettuce, tomato, egg and cheese. Joel didn't like the combo, preferring his egg, bacon and cheese without the lettuce and tomato, but I like adding something fresh and healthy to the usual breakfast fare. What I did not appreciate was that there were no hashbrowns on the breakfast menu! Hashbrowns are my favorite part of a McDonald's breakfast so that was disappointing. The coffee, however, came with a little nougat sweet so that was cute and different.
For lunch items, we ordered two McKroket sandwiches, because that sounded very unique and is definitely something we've never seen on a US menu before. It turns out it was basically the bitterballen stuff we had tried in Bruges that I did not care for. It is fried meat mush and had some sort of mustard-y horseradish-y sauce on it. Not a winner in our book, although Steve seemed to like his and Joel finished the one we were sharing.
The next two items, however, are some of my favorite things I've ever had at a McDonald's! In fact, later in the week when I did not feel like cooking in our tiny cabin kitchen, we had McDonald's for dinner and got these two items again. First up was a Greek-inspired chicken sandwich and it was so fresh and amazing. The chicken was fried perfectly and was really juicy, and it was topped with lettuce, tomato, feta cheese, fried onions, and a spicy lemon yogurt sauce. I am crossing my fingers that they bring this combo to the UK at some point!
The second item I loved was the fried cheese nuggets. These were different from any we have gotten at a McDonald's before. I'm not entirely sure what kind of cheese was inside - the menu just calls them "cheese snacks" - but I think it may have been some kind of Gouda. Whatever it was it was delicious!
We don't always order fries when we go to McDonald's around the world, because, well, fries are fries anywhere you go. But we do get them if there is a unique sauce on the menu, and here we could get "frites sauce" which is a popular Dutch accompaniment to fries. It is similar to mayo, but the internet tells me it is "leaner and usually sweeter" than mayonnaise. It was pretty good, although given the choice, I think I'd still go with the American classic of ketchup.
That's all the food we ordered, but I have to share this little gem of information. In Europe, it is common that you have to pay to use the toilet in public places, which I find really irksome. I don't tend to carry cash/change and who wants to rummage around for 70 cents when you need to go! At least at this bathroom you could swipe your credit card to get in! I wish Europe would get on board with free toilets, but if they are going to make me pay at least they have started taking plastic - this was the first one I encountered on the trip but we saw more as time went on.
So that was our trip to McDonald's in The Netherlands - after this we finally arrive in Amsterdam to meet up with my parents!
XOXO, Bethany