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This week McDonald’s bestowed the honor of a new name on its crispy chicken sandwich line, giving it the McCrispy title. To honor the addition of the “Mc” title, the chain is about to release two new variations of the chicken sandwich on March 13: the Bacon Ranch McCrispy and Bacon Ranch Deluxe McCrispy. I spotted them early at my local restaurant and had to try them.
McDonald’s Crispy Chicken Sandwich line has been popular since it launched in 2021, but the sandwich earning its “Mc”name is a big deal. Now, it joins the ranks of the McNuggets, McFlurry, and McMuffin, all of which are wild best-sellers for the brand. “Earning your ‘Mc’ is a true McDonald’s badge of honor,” the brand said of the McCrispy in a statement.
Plus, chicken is forecasted to be big for the chain this year. The Accelerating the Arches 2.0 plan puts chicken front and center as a core menu item essential to McDonald’s future growth. Since this is the first chicken innovation of 2023, it’s an exciting release. How did the new McCrispy sandwiches stack up? I enlisted one other taster to try the new items—and there’s one we’d get again.
The Bacon Ranch McCrispy is the classic crispy chicken filet spread generously with a buttermilk ranch sauce, topped with pickles and bacon.
The look: McDonald’s, we have a problem. For some reason, this was served in a sleeve, which I’ve never seen McDonald’s do before. I get that this was an early release of the sandwich but it was still odd. I was worried that it would be a squished mess, but the big, uniformly deep mahogany chicken patty held up to its sad sleeve. This is a testament to the chicken used, which looked delicious.
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The taste: Unfortunately, this sandwich fell flat because it just didn’t have enough of anything. The promo of this chicken sandwich shows a beautiful crispy breast of chicken with sauce spilling out, adorned with lots of pickles, and exploding with bacon, but we got maybe one and a half pieces of floppy bacon and two tiny pickles—one of which wasn’t even whole.
This isn’t a complicated sandwich and is only different from the original McCrispy because it has bacon and ranch sauce. The image shows ranch sauce on both sides, which this didn’t have. It only had a small squirt in the middle. The chicken was crispy in spots and the roll was soft and fresh, but this one wasn’t worth the extra money. Overall, this sandwich was just too dry and not a worthy upgrade.
The deluxe version of this sandwich has the addition of bacon and ranch sauce with extras of shredded lettuce and tomato.
The look: This sandwich looked much better than the other. It was in a proper box that kept all of the ingredients on top of the sandwich. Bacon draped enticing over the side and the lettuce and tomato gave it attractive height. Plus, we could see that this had more sauce than the other.
The taste: The Bacon Ranch McCrispy Deluxe was a satisfying mouthful of all the ingredients from the first bite. The lettuce and tomato carried the sauce throughout the sandwich and the tangy, herby ranch played perfectly with the subtle, peppery spices on the chicken breast. The roll was soft and fresh and held up to all the ingredients.
Amazingly, the star of this sandwich was not the crispy chicken or the bacon, but the heaping ranch-dressed salad that topped it. The lettuce was perfectly crisp and shredded in a way that it didn’t spill out of the sandwich. The Roma tomatoes were delicious with the coating of ranch. The bacon played a bit part, as the spice in the chicken breast overpowered it but a few bites where the chicken was thin had some of its smokiness. We would definitely get this one again.
McDonald’s also added a new beverage to the menu this week, simple lemonade made with real lemons and sugar. Yes, that’s it.
The look: The pale lemon-colored drink looked refreshing with little bits of lemon swirled throughout.
The taste: This is going to be big this summer for a diner looking for a simple, refreshing drink. It had the perfect balance of sweet and subtle tartness and it tasted super clean. There was no cloying aftertaste and it was significantly lighter than a soda.
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