Food-loving Hong Kong gets new snack that is proving an unlikely hit
Hong Kong is well known as a food-lovers’ paradise, with the wide variety of cuisines available in the city giving locals a smorgasbord of excellent choices for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but recently a fast food pancake creation has proved to be an unlikely hit.
Hong Kongers have been eagerly awaiting the launch of McDonald’s McGriddle breakfast sandwich, which finally hit the city’s menus earlier this month after years of delay.
The McGriddle, a cheese-topped grilled sausage patty sandwiched between two maple-flavored pancakes, had only been available in other markets, leading some to travel as far as Japan to get their hands on one.
The burger is priced at HK$35 ($4.5) as part of a meal set that includes a hash brown and a drink.
Hong Kong’s general fascination with all things Japanese also contributed to the flow of people traveling for the burger. McDonald’s jumped on the Japan bandwagon, with food delivery company Foodpanda even featuring Japanese actor Takuya Kimura speaking in Cantonese in its promotional campaign for McGriddle deliveries.
The McGriddle, introduced in the United States in 2003, had never made it to the Hong Kong market despite the item’s popularity overseas. But this changed just two months after a copycat sandwich from the Tai Hing Cake Shop in Tsuen Wan in the city’s New Territories sparked a social media frenzy, inspiring many local eateries to follow suit.
This surge of copycat products appears to have prompted McDonald’s Hong Kong to finally offer its version.
McDonald’s Hong Kong did not respond to inquiries from Kyodo News about its reasons for not previously selling the McGriddle nor why it decided to do so now.
The release of the McGriddle in Hong Kong has upended some assumptions that the sweet and salty combination of the food would not suit the local palate. A test sale of the McGriddle in late July caused long queues to form outside the restaurants as customers waited for hours to get their hands on the sandwich.
“Thank you for bringing the McGriddle to Hong Kong,” one person said, joining a social media frenzy on the first day of the test sale on July 27. “Even with the overwhelming demand, the sandwiches still looked and tasted great.”
By noon, several outlets had sold out of the product, and just three days later, McDonald’s announced that it had sold one million McGriddles. The demand was so intense that the company had to temporarily halt sales until Aug. 5 to replenish their supplies for the official launch.
The popularity even led some enterprising locals to attempt to resell the sandwich online for as much as HK$300.
A Hong Konger reportedly even went so far as to stockpile 10 frozen McGriddles before the item’s temporary discontinuation, with the person boasting that the reheated version had an “indescribable” taste that outperformed even the freshly made versions.
