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...some level, the very idea of a McDonald's chef sounds preposterous. Burgers, fries, the McRib - is this really the work of a chef? The food at McDonald's tastes partly of nostalgia and partly of marketing; the rest is surely salt...
Coudreaut and his team spend most of their time playing with ingredients far more practical than broccoli rabe and celery root. Most days, they work with chicken and apples and beef. Facing the kitchen through a glass wall is a large sign reading "It's Not Real Until It's Real in the Restaurants." (See the best business deals...
...root is certainly real, so real that it's covered in dirt when you buy it at the supermarket - but McDonald's is, after all, a corporation. Coudreaut may be a chef, but his employer is no restaurant. McDonald's Corp. is largely a holding company, a middleman that works between restaurant owners and food suppliers. It provides franchisees with inexpensive, processed ingredients and - this is where Coudreaut's team and other development people come in - a guarantee that new menu items have been tested and tweaked and retested so they can come out looking and tasting roughly the same...
...team to appraise - the Angus burgers were co-developed with a group of California franchisees - and they often push back against odd-sounding creations like one of Coudreaut's failures, a breakfast Snack Wrap made with a crepe that held vanilla cream cheese and fruit. ("Why it didn't work is because we served it cold," Coudreaut says. "We serve hot food. Even our salads, we serve warm chicken on top.") The testing process is painstaking: it took two years for the Angus Third Pounders, the company's first new burger in eight years, to get on the menu...
...nice to know McDonald's employs a dreamer. In addition to that endive salad, Coudreaut sautéed a very simple wild-salmon fillet for me - just salmon seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked in olive oil. Four ingredients. I asked why four ingredients couldn't work at McDonald's. Coudreaut thought for a moment and gave a half nod, half shrug. "Maybe five years from now," he said...