Kotas Reviews McDonald's Szechuan Sauce

Once in a great long while, a movement begins. Usually with a simple offhand remark or joke, it swells into something bigger than the creators ever intended. People begin repeating it, almost incessantly. It spreads through whatever niche community it started in, and may, if popular enough, slither out into the wider pop cultural world. Then someone in a corporate board room decides they can make a quick buck, and it all comes crashing down around their heads. Ladies and Gentlemen, today we review McDonald's Szechuan Dipping Sauce.

As much as they were legally allowed to give me.

Man, what to say that hasn't already been said, eh? For those of you who live in rocks or caves, in the late 1990s, to promote the then new Disney movie Mulan, McDonalds released a limited time only Szechuan Sauce for their McNuggets, and after the movie left theaters, so did this sauce leave McDonalds to be mostly forgotten...until April 1, 2017, when Rick and Morty's Season 3 Premiere aired. Rick and Morty is a hilarious take on the "kid and scientist team up for adventures" subgenre of science fiction. I'm a fan of the show, so of course I loved the Season 3 opener, which wrapped up a bunch of stuff from Season 2 and was very entertaining. However, we're not here to talk about Rick and Morty. One of the running gags in the episode was Rick's desire to obtain the Szechuan Sauce again, even though they don't make it any more. At the end of the episode he even goes on a rant about how it is the only thing that makes him happy, and so on and so forth. Good joke, really.

The fandom took to this like...well, me on a variety of weird foods. It became quite the meme on the Reddits and other places, culminating in a petition to bring back the sauce. McDonalds, smelling nerd money, decided to whip up a few batches and send them to one of the show creators. Then, smelling more nerd money, they decided to have a "one day only" release of the sauce at stores. This went...poorly. Go check out the nonsense for yourself, but people flipped their fucking shit for this sauce, going so far as to harass workers when they ran out, and in general be bad sports. It caused a bit of a ruckus, is what I'm saying. McDonalds, after the whole mess died down a bit, decided to release a whole bunch of the sauce to stores in the winter and well, it's finally here. So, was it worth rioting over? Let's find out!

Spoiler: No, it wasn't.

Well, it certainly looks different from their usual sauces. I'm a Sweet and Sour man myself, and this smelled a bit like that, along with soy sauce. So, how does it taste? Well, I rather liked it. Probably my favorite of all the McDonalds dipping sauces, actually. Tastes like Sweet and Sour mixed with teriyaki sauce and some vague spice. Just enough to bring a bit of heat, and nothing more. Given that I happen to like Sweet and Sour sauce AND teriyaki sauce, this mix does right by me. So, yeah, my new favorite sauce for when I eat at McDonalds. That said...it's not mind blowing. It's good, but it totally wasn't worth the hype (or a car for that matter). Still, I'll be eating this until I can't whenever I go to McDonalds. Which, with a 4 year old, is more frequently than I would like. At least their new tenders are good.

On the FACE Rating System, this sauce gets 2 Portal Guns, er Smileys. It's a damn fine fast food sauce for your chicken (or burgers, hey man, I don't judge) and has supplanted Sweet and Sour as my favorite. However, it's still just a fast food dipping sauce, so don't think it will change your life or anything. If you like fast food dipping sauces, give this one a whirl (if you can), but like, don't go out of your way too much to get it. Certainly don't trade a car for it!