Friday, December 28, 2012

Mediocre McDonald's on Elgin Street

Recently in the mail we received coupons for McDonald's. The usual coupons were there for 2 can dine for $9.48, 1 can dine for $4.99 and buy one get one free deals. 

I grabbed the 1 can dine for $4.99 and headed downtown to check out the McDonald's at 252 Elgin Street

I entered the location at 1 P.M. to find only one other customer there ordering.  Employee wise there was one cashier and one working the kitchen with a manager in the background not really servicing the customers via kitchen or runner help. Since it wasn't that busy, I wasn't expecting any assistance from the management team. 

I waited the two minutes for the first customer to be served before moving forward and placing my order.

The Order: 1 Big Mac, 1 Medium Fries and 1 Medium Coke.

When placing the order it was never requested whether it was "for here" or "to go".  I only realized this when the cashier was putting the Big Mac into a bag.  I quickly corrected her and she grabbed a tray with the usual paper tray liner, gathered the Big Mac and the medium fries.  

I visited the soft drink station to obtain my Coke and the necessary condiments.  The odd thing about this location is the soft drink lids are given to you when you obtain your glass and not at the drink station like at other McDonald's locations with similar layouts. 

I found a seat at the long bar style seating at the window to watch the world go by.  The problem with this location is that they put up their promotional posters that obstruct many of the sight lines of those customers wishing to people watch while consuming their McDonald's meal. But I was lucky enough to find a seat in the middle of the two posters that I could see out the window at the passing pedestrians of Ottawa's Elgin Street.

I dug into my normal looking fries.  Sure they had been cooked properly but seemed to have been waiting to be consumed slightly too long.  They were mediocre luke warm at best. Nothing special and definitely not freshly made.  

The Big Mac was mediocre at best as well.  Nothing special like freshly prepared meat that was still warm, in fact, the meat tasted luke warm just like the fries.  But the consistency of the amount of toppings, sauce and meat was better than I had at other locations if it was any consolation. 

The restaurant floors had a lot to be desired of. After yesterdays day of snow fall the front walkway was understandably slushy.  But the inside tile floors were soaked in water with the requisite neon yellow  "Wet Floor" visible.  Not an industrial carpet to be found inside the front door or in front of the cash that would even make an effort at sponging up any water from wet boots.  Not sure what the McDonald's management at this location was thinking, but a slip and fall lawsuit is quite easy. 

Overall, this McDonald's needs to pull it's socks up in terms of food temperature.  Serving food that is luke warm in temperature is not satisfactory especially with McDonald's pricing inching up year over year.  The wet floors are inexcusible as well considering the light foot traffic this location was seeing.  If this had of been a regular lunch time crowd, the water being tracked in would have been enough to float Noah's Ark.  Not a terrible lunch but not a great McDonald's lunch either.

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