Neal Fraser Served Food Bloggers A Meal With McDonald's
A chef prepared a meal for food bloggers with McDonald's ingredients
Neal Fraser, the chef and owner of L.A.'s hit Redbird, pranked some food bloggers earlier this week. The chef welcomed about 40 guests to an elegantly decorated 1928 Italianate villa, decked out with long, rustic-looking wood tables and place settings that were finished with a small bouquet of herbs and greens placed atop each white linen napkin. Fraser told guests he would be cooking with "experimental" and "fresh" ingredients but that there would be a twist to the evening, the OC Register reported.
Those experimental ingredients? They came from McDonald's.
The megachain approached Fraser and asked him to create a meal with its ingredients (like the stuff that goes into a Big Mac, Egg McMuffins and its salads). At first, the chef declined but ultimately signed on to the project. He served the guests chilled avocado soup, a romaine salad with bacon and buttermilk, chicken wrapped in bacon, meatballs and coffee custard—yup, all made from McDonald's ingredients.
Fraser and the McDonald's execs, who were watching and listening from another room, got away with it for a little bit, but eventually guests started to suspect something was up. By the time Fraser came into the dining room at the end of the meal, one diner beat him to the punch by shouting "golden arches." While some guests were impressed, others looked disturbed.
A video (likely strategic shots of people enjoying parts of the meal) will be online in about a month, so brace for a McDonald's commercial or at least a YouTube clip. Fraser, who was paid an undisclosed amount for the evening, told Eater through a rep: "It was an intriguing experiment. The challenge was the draw. Is it controversial? Sure. But this is also a means to keep the conversation going."