This is actually a no-travel news story. This year, perhaps to discourage unsafe travel during the pandemic, McDonalds is bringing back its iconic but elusive fake rib sandwich for a limited run across the U.S., not just in selected markets as it does most years. No one will need to undertake a holy quest to find one.
Your reporter will be quick to admit that the sandwich looks strange, with its rib-shaped slab of pressed meat complete with fake grill marks. Your reporter admits that it barely fits in the Food and Foodways category. But, like apparently millions of other, he never fails to have one, or two, or… whenever they are around.
This is the first year since 2012 that McRib has gone national. It first appeared on McDonalds menus in 1981, but was gone by 1985 due to poor sales. It has had off and on status since, although it never left the many in several countries, including Luxembourg, home of the McDonalds chef who invented it, and who also invented Chicken McNuggets. It was originally developed to ease the problem of a chicken shortage, according to this Wikipedia entry, which also gives the military science history of ‘restructured meat.’
