Travel blogger Christian Grossi walked into a McDonald's in Shanghai expecting the familiar comfort of a Big Mac. What he found instead was a menu that looked like it belonged in a different restaurant entirely.
In a viral TikTok, Grossi works through the Shanghai location's offerings with genuine bewilderment and delight. There's the "Black Gold Moon" burger, inspired by the Chinese novel Journey to the West and the video game Black Myth: Wukong, complete with sesame-seeded black buns. There's a Salted Egg Yolk McFlurry. There's a cheese-flavored coffee that Grossi describes, with painful honesty, as tasting "like you put creamer in your coffee. And then, as soon as it gets down your esophagus, it tastes like spreadable cheese from the can."
The curly fries, though, he actually loves.
How McDonald's Became a Window Into Local Culture
McDonald's operates over 36,000 restaurants across more than 100 countries, and somewhere along the way, it stopped being a symbol of American uniformity and became something more interesting: a canvas for local flavor. The Shanghai menu is extreme, but it's not alone. In Paris, McDonald's serves cheesecake and macarons. In Tel Aviv, you can order falafel sandwiches with Middle Eastern spices. In Hawaii, the menu includes Spam and Portuguese sausage—items that would baffle someone ordering in Des Moines.
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Start Your News DetoxWhat's happening here is less about McDonald's abandoning its identity and more about the company recognizing that a global presence doesn't require a global menu. The math is simple: people eat what they know. They crave what tastes like home. A Salted Egg Yolk McFlurry isn't a betrayal of the McDonald's formula—it's an acknowledgment that "home" looks different depending on where you're standing.
For travelers, these localized menus have become small cultural artifacts. They're a way to taste a place without committing to a full restaurant experience. They're also proof that even the most American of American brands understands that global doesn't mean identical.
Grossi's video taps into something deeper than just "fast food tastes weird in other countries." It's the small shock of recognizing that the world doesn't experience things the way you do—and that's not a problem. It's the point.
