McDonald's Japan Fries Review: Japan's Take on the Benchmark

The Fries Blog team continues our tour of Asia. This week, we're in Tokyo, Japan. Japan is known for a lot of delicious food like sushi, wagyu, udon, ramen, etc. And naturally, being fries lovers, we wanted to compare the benchmark. McDonald's Korea was a big disappointment. Can the Japanese do better? Let's find out in our McDonald's Japan fries review!

We see a lot of interesting menu items, especially the Samurai Mac!

Texture (1/10)

These fries are floppy because they lack the crisp and the innards are near hollow. Thus they sag and droop and can barely keep up straight even without ketchup. The vast air pockets form a deflated fry and with a non-crisp skin, these fries can literally bend in half. We have never seen fries like this before. Exterior has no structure nor crisp nor crunch. The saving grace were the small chips that were on the floor of the carton. We can confidently say that in terms of the texture, McDonald's Japan is closer to McDonald's Korea. The Korean ones at least had a more wholesome innard. Not in Japan.

Spineless fries with minimal crisp and deflated innards.

Flavor (3/10)

Perhaps because Japan is a soy sauce culture, they seem to have forgotten that you need salt on fries. There were some saltiness on a few sticks, especially on the top of the carton but most of them were bland. We do not think that salt was mixed in with tossing but rather sprinkled on top of the carton. We're not sure whether this is an official McDonald's Japan instruction or this particular individual who prepared our fries on this very day. And as the standard benchmark, McDonald's fries do not have seasoning so this was it; a largely bland set of potato sticks.

Shape (2/10)

The shape of the fries were short, weird looking potatoes. There was minimal size consistency from a few that were long as a child's finger to small chips that lay scattered on the bottom of the carton. But what was not forgivable was the limp sticks, despite being short. They couldn't hold their shape in your hands. The fries fell apart in your very hands being fragile and without soul. These shapes are even worse than their Korean counterparts.

Short fries with varying sizes. When you pick them up, they droop.

Presentation (5/10)

Not much to say in this criterion. The fries were placed in a standard McDonald's Large carton. There seemed to be reasonable amount of fries, slightly overflowing at the brim. Due to the short fries, they were not stacked well vertically but we think they did the best with what they had in hand.

We have a standard McDonald's Large carton with good level of packing.

Experience (4/10)

Although these fries were some of the worst we have reviewed, it actually went well with the Samurai Mac, which as far we can tell is essentially a double quarter-pounder with teriyaki sauce. The burger was quite salty so the fries balanced it out decently. But other than this serendipitous coincidence, the fries alone are definitely not worth it and lag severely behind their American counterpart.

Texture	1
Flavor	3
Shape	2
Presentation	5
Experience	4
Overall	3.0 / 10

Conclusion

McDonald's has achieved global fast-food domination but it seems that they have issues maintaining the caliber of fries in Asia, now proven with Korea and Japan. Maybe this is due to smaller potatoes or factory production but regardless they lack quality and the outcome is dismal. The cooking methods are absolutely off and McDonald's should seriously consider retraining their Asian cooking process to align with their American standards.

Milky Pie - collab with Japan's Milky caramel brand. The crust was the good old McDonald's Apple Pie which at this point has been perfected.