Americans Abroad Eating at McDonald's

Many a snide comment has been made about Americans who, while abroad, choose to eat at McDonald's.

So it's not without some slight trepidation that I announce: I'm American, I live abroad, and occasionally, I eat at McDonald's or other fast food chain restaurants.

Please note, that, on the whole, I intensely dislike McDonald's, and when I'm in America or Malaysia I absolutely refuse to eat there because there is always a better option.

I choose to confess my obvious lack of class in visiting McDonald's while abroad in order to explain what may motivate some of the Americans who choose to eat in McDonald's while overseas.

These reasons apply to my situation:

1) I do not have an extremely strong stomach. I live in a region of the world known for delicious local foods as well as occasional high-profile cases concerning lack of food safety. Have you ever heard of the rat meat, bleached tofu, fried food coated in melted plastic, and gutter oil phenomenons? That's all real. The usual way to find out which restaurants to avoid and which to try is to get food recommendations from the locals, and even in our own neighborhood, there are a number of street stalls and food shops that our local friends caution us to stay away from. When we're traveling, or working, or otherwise far from home, I will often choose the "safest" foods I can find, because I don't have the opinions of locals to advise me, and I don't want to deal with stomach ailments instead of enjoying my time and getting my work done. Sometimes, even with as much as I know about McDonald's shady food prep practices, I perceive it as a relatively 'safe' option, given that the company extends certain food safety practices to all of its franchises.

Kung Pao Chicken and Green Beans with Minced Pork

 

2) Good food is expensive. We were in Hong Kong last weekend. Hong Kong is famous for its seafood and its dim sum, and as well as its high prices. Many a decent meal at a reasonably nice restaurant is in the 200-400 HKD range--while a double cheeseburger combo at McDonald's costs 22 HKD. Personally, I have a lifelong dislike of both dim sum and seafood, and I like to keep my vacation budget small, so paying big bucks for a local specialty dim sum meal when I've had dim sum countless times over the last decade and have never developed a taste for it doesn't make sense to me. Restaurant food is generally not a huge priority to me, so if it's up to me, I won't ever choose a fancy expensive restaurant--if I want an expensive meal, I'll cook it at home. I'm the kind of girl who is very content to go to the grocery store on vacation to grab oatmeal, bananas,  and  sandwich supplies and survive on those for the duration of vacation. My favorite food in the entire world is Indian flatbreads with curry--a meal which usually costs less than $2 (USD) when purchased in Malaysia. A kid's hamburger or a small fry (the only two things I'll typically eat on the McDonald's menu) are cheap and will stave off the hunger pangs for a few more hours so that I can do the next thing on my list. I'd rather be able to go on vacations that are affordable for me than to wait forever to save up money so that I can buy extravagant meals on vacation. That's one area where it's fairly easy for us to cut costs.

Pan-fried vegetable egg roll

 

3) When you live abroad, sometimes the thought of Western food is bizarrely enticing! Our usual weekly diet involves eating noodles or rice with delicious add-ons about 5 days a week, whether home-cooked or from our favorite shops, with the other two days being something like tacos, soup, fried chicken, or eggs. When you live just down the street from an amazingly delicious noodle shop, somehow, when you're on vacation, that exotic-looking Subway sign (there are no Subway restaurants in ShenZhen) and the thought of bread and an actual sub sandwich simply sounds more appealing than experimenting with visiting yet another noodle shop.

 Fruit on a stick

4) Eating at an overseas McDonald's can still be an exotic experience. From the seasonal "Prosperity Burger" available during Chinese New Year, to red bean and green lentil flavored sundaes, to chicken porridge, to burgers topped with mashed potato--you don't actually know what's being served in McDonald's restaurants around the world, so it can be fun to walk in and find out!

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Also, by the way, my hometown is widely considered the best place to eat in all of South East Asia, so I can get get plenty of fabulous, inexpensive food whenever I visit home--perhaps that skews my perspective about eating in unfamiliar places.

What about you? Have you ever gone for some familiar fast food when traveling outside of your home country, or are you a far braver person than I?