McDonald's Breakfast In Hong Kong Is Truly Deluxe

McDonald's offers a fairly extensive breakfast menu in the U.S., but most of these tend to be grab-and-go a la carte items like its signature Egg McMuffins or McGriddles. Perhaps this is because its two Big Breakfast platters may not do so well with the drive-thru customers who could be the chain's wheelhouse, as it were, since such orders can make up 70% of the chain's sales in certain markets. McDonald's in Hong Kong, however, goes all-in on platters when it comes to breakfast. It offers two deluxe versions, one with eggs, English muffins, sausage, and hash browns and the other with pancakes (aka hotcakes), sausage, and hash browns. There's also a jumbo breakfast featuring all of the aforementioned items.

If you want anything resembling an a la carte breakfast in Hong Kong, your best bet may lie in ordering off the McCafe menu since there you can find mini donuts, muffins, or short stacks of whipped cream-topped pancakes in a choice of chocolate, strawberry, and Ovaltine flavors. Ovaltine, which could itself be considered a breakfast beverage (as it is in Switzerland), actually features pretty heavily on the Hong Kong McCafe menu as you can also order various Ovaltine-flavored coffee drinks including a bubble latte. (What you won't get, however, are any straws to drink these with since McDonald's restaurants in Hong Kong are ditching plastic in a move towards being more eco-friendly.)

While the breakfast platters at a Hong Kong McDonald's may not differ too much from similar menu items available in the U.S., these restaurants do have one type of dish that might be less familiar to us as a breakfast meal: twisty pasta. The twisty pasta plates seem to be a Golden Arches spin on macaroni soup, which is a typical breakfast at the type of Hong Kong diners known as cha chaan teng. McDonald's Hong Kong menu offers this soup in a choice of ham and egg, sausage and egg, and grilled chicken (no egg), while the noodles appear to be cooked in a broth that also includes corn.

It isn't only Americans and Europeans that might find macaroni soup an out-of-the-ordinary morning meal. Japanese media outlet Sora News 24 reviewed McDonald's Hong Kong Sausage 'n' Egg Twisty Pasta Meal and felt it to be a surprising breakfast choice, but nonetheless found it quite flavorful and something that one could easily eat on a daily basis. Interestingly enough, the reviewers noted that while a number of mom-and-pop (or a mā-and-a bàh) restaurants were selling similar breakfast noodles, they saw plenty of Hong Kongese slurping up the Mickey D's version so it apparently passed muster with the locals.