The first lesson in reviewing fast food is that one must never, ever decide to try something out when one is quite hungry. Tonight, on the way home with Moses* we tried out the McDonald’s “Authentic Philly Cheesesteak.” The closest standard against which I can judge their sandwich is that of the Great Steak and Potato Company, although many cheesesteak snobs would disagree with Great Steak as being authentic. Heck, many cheesesteak snobs would disagree with Wikipedia’s entry.

Here’s what I know an authentic cheesesteak has: thinly sliced meat, onions sauteed on the flat griddle the meat is cooked on, a crusty hoagie roll, spreadable yellow cheese (Cheez Wiz or Velveeta), and the meat has got to be very drippy enough that the roll gets soaked in its juices.

Let’s see what McD’s had, shall we? The meat seemed “chopped and formed,” like the one used in this product. Now, whether the chopping and the forming can at low cost produce realistic grain in the meat, I do not know, so in the spirit of giving them the benefit of the doubt, I’ll say this instead: the meat was too thick. The bits and pieces are very discrete and are very steak-y. One may argue that a steak-like texture in a sandwich called a “cheese steak” is a good thing. One may also argue that the Earth is flat and that the sun dips under the horizon to dance the macarena for twelve hours while the moon blows cheeba into all the slumbering souls on half of the world.

Having said that, I am much more forgiving of the meat than everything else in this sandwich. The bread used had a dense, almost kaiser-roll consistency. There is no thin, crispy crust covering an airy, but tender and robust pith. The dense, almost pale yellow bread had a soft skin that was littered with… oh my God could it be? Cornmeal. Or something gritty. Freshly baked “French bread” at the local grocer makes a better substitute to a hoagie roll than what they chose to bulk up the already disappointing steak.

Cheese? White American. It was too sharp to be the buttery, but always modest provolone that is offered as a choice in many a cheesesteak place. Yet again it was sliced too thick, too solid, and too timid to be some alien, white version of CheezeWiz or Velveeta. It was cheese, and thinking about the 90 calories I got out of it is starting to make me sad.

Moses, after his second bite, asked me for some of the barbecue sauce I was dipping my fries in. He grumbles, “their strongest quality is marketing.”

“For a food service business, that’s no good,” I reply.

“No it isn’t.”

A more eloquent review of such a mediocre meal, I will never find.

* – “Moses” is one of many nicknames I have for my sixtysomething stepdad, a regular guest on my narratives in this here blog.