This article is part of our Cocktail Chatter series, where we dive into the wild, weird, and wondrous corners of history to share over a cocktail and impress your friends.
There’s an unwritten rule when it comes to indecision at any fast food drive-thru window: When in doubt, go with the item that’s in the chain’s name. At Burger King? Get a burger. Stumped and staring at the Taco Bell menu? Settle for tacos. It’s not always going to be a win, but it’s usually the safest move in each scenario.
Of course, there are chains that don’t have one namesake menu offering. The biggest fast food chain in the world, McDonald’s, comes to mind. While among the 40,000-plus locations around the world there are many country-specific food items, the chain remains uniquely American at its core. No matter which brick-and-mortar you find yourself in, you can count on it to carry chicken nuggets, hamburgers, apple pies, and McFlurries — assuming the ice cream machine isn’t out of service. Still, that doesn’t mean the bigwigs behind the Golden Arches haven’t attempted to change that narrative before.
Enter — drum roll, please — McSpaghetti.
This Town Needs Spaghetti
Reports vary as to when exactly pasta rolled out to McDonald’s in the States, but some evidence suggests that the McSpaghetti era spanned the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when the chain added pastas to its menu. There was the McSpaghetti (spaghetti and marinara sauce with optional meatballs), fettuccine Alfredo, and lasagna — each served with a side of garlic bread.
According to an August 1992 article from The Chicago Tribune outlining the end of McDonald’s’ test marketing of its pasta lineup, a brand spokesperson claimed that the dishes had “good consumer acceptance” at the time, but the chain was having trouble maintaining a “source of supply and equipment.” The article goes on to mention that “Wall Street analysts were unimpressed with McDonald’s decision to return the pasta,” meaning that the dishes had already been around for some time before 1992.
After the 1992 report, there’s little evidence that tells us what happened to the pasta lineup, but we can only assume that McDonald’s slowly stripped the items away from participating locations’ menus. There’s even video proof that at least one franchise carried McSpaghetti as recently as 1996. The key word to note here: franchise.
The Philippines and That One Orlando Location
According to a 2019 Forbes article, McDonald’s franchises — as in locations that aren’t run by Mickey D’s corporate — have the freedom to offer specialized menu items that “have the potential of being popular in the region their restaurants are located.” So even though nearly every location in the U.S. has long stopped dishing up McSpaghetti and the like, there’s one holdout in Orlando, Fla.
It’s called the World’s Largest Entertainment McDonald’s, and as the name suggests, it is indeed the largest location in the world by square footage. In addition to offering the nearly extinct pasta lineup, the store sells Belgian waffles, brick oven pizza, cheesesteaks, and all sorts of items that you won’t find at any other McDonald’s. This place is open 24/7, and it’s been in business since 1976. On the other side of the planet, though, there are a handful of McDonald’s restaurants serving up their own takes on the infamous McSpaghetti. In the Philippines, where sweetened spaghetti is a cultural comfort food, most McDonald’s locations offer a McSpaghetti topped with banana ketchup and sliced up hot dogs.
In the U.S., the legacy of McSpaghetti ranks among that of the chain’s Hula Burger and McHotDog. They’re items that folks remember, although not for the reasons McDonald’s would hope. But hey, you gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet, and McDonald’s appears to be doing just fine.
