I Went To McDonald's Headquarters And Tried Its Global Favorites Menu

Chicago is unquestionably one of America's greatest food cities, where the pizza dishes run way deep, its hot dogs get the works, including a pickle (but don't you dare put ketchup on it), and the Italian beef sandwiches and sausages are total stallions. One of the best kept secrets, which isn't even really a secret at all, is that you can taste McDonald's fare from around the globe at the West Loop location beneath its corporate headquarters. Ever since it opened in 2018, this McDonald's served up the usual goodies like QPCs, nuggs, and fries, but also items one could only dream of with its rotating Global Favorites menu. I love dropping into McDonalds whenever I travel overseas, and here the company is saving me the flight.

As a lover of Chicago, McDonald's, and international cuisine, I somehow had never had the pleasure of tying all these passions together with a meal at this location. On my birthday, no less, I corrected this error, and finally walked through the doors of this magical, almost mystical McDonald's, with an empty stomach, open mind, and an open mouth. 

While many beloved and standard McDonald's items were born in the U.S., some ideas and concepts have been imported from abroad. We have our McFriends in Canada to thank for giving the world the McFlurry, Hong Kong for McShaker Fries, Australia for the McCafé, and the divisive Big Arch got its arch-spicious start in Portugal. Would any of these foreign-to-me items from the Global Favorites menu, from Garlic McNuggets and Onion Rings to whatever McPops are, be worthy of adoption? There's only one McWay to find out ...

I have visited the British Isles perhaps more than any other European destination, and every time I go, I usually pop into a McDonald's. I'm obsessed with the pineapple stick that sometimes comes as a kids' meal option, and always intrigued by the burgers with American names, like the Mississippi Stack and the Philly Cheese Stack. While regionally named burgers would play well within our country, the one U.K. import on the menu was the more rudimentary sounding BBQ Bacon Stack. This doubled-up patty burger first hit U.K. stores in 2021, and has even previously held sway on the Global Favorites menu as recently as 2024.

An encore of the BBQ Bacon Stack at this McDonald's in 2026 seems like a ringing endorsement. It has a good sounding lineup of pepper jack cheese, smoky bacon, lettuce, Roma tomatoes, slivered onions, and an unspecified BBQ sauce. The only thing that really stood out to me was the sesame and poppy-seed bun.

When I took my first bite, I felt like I was eating a souped up Big Mac, minus the needless middle bun. The burger patties were ultra-thin, essentially letting the other elements have more of a say. Once you get past the endless shreds of lettuce and floppy tomatoes, the BBQ sauce starts to give this stack an identity. It's neither smoky nor sugary. It seemed to be more vinegar based, and I guess a little comparable to brown sauce from the U.K. The sauce was indeed the draw, but not sure it was enough to make this a destination sandwich worth a passport stamp of approval. Maybe if the beef was a collab with famed steakhouse Hawksmoor, then we'd be onto a winner.

The name Bacon Hot Honey McCrispy didn't seem to scream anything to my appetite. It just sounded like a McCrispy trying to keep up with the "swicy" trend that has sweetened, heated, and eaten up the last decade. This creation debuted in Canada back in 2024, and it completely slipped my mind that this Global Favorite sandwich before me had already debuted on our shores earlier this year.

With no memory of that, I jumped right into this sandwich. My mouth was loving the various textures, where the soft bun juxtaposed with the super-crunchy, most excellent McCrispy chicken filet. The bacon added another texture, but without being McCrispy itself, didn't really seem to make much of a dent overall. There were supposedly crunchy jalapeños within there, too, but they apparently forgot to wave to my mouth to say hello. The real enigma of this sandwich is how the hot honey sauce did not even remotely make a splash. It's as if it was just a tasty Bacon McCrispy, and the real glue keeping it together and adding a creamy diversion it needed was a dollop of mayo.

When I realized after the fact I'd tried this sandwich as a part of the Hot Honey menu in early 2026, my thoughts on the sandwich were almost identical. That menu included the sauce in a dipping cup for McNugget use, and a cup could have helped it then as it could here to really help the sandwich live up to its billing.

McDonald's Chicken McNuggets have been a proven winner since the dawn of their introduction, and remain a favorite for young and old. Flavor evolution for the McNugget usually comes in the form of new sauces and the company has had no shortage of delivering new ones this decade alone, with one of my favorites being the hail-worthy Caesar. However, there has been one exception in the U.S., where the nuggets themselves were flavored — Spicy Chicken McNuggets. Those are fine and all, but in Japan, McDonald's has taken things a bit further with Spicy Garlic Black Pepper Chicken McNuggets. They debuted in 2022, and have returned to the menu here and there since, including earlier in 2026.

Just by the sight of these wonderful looking things, you can tell that these are special McNuggets, and unlike anything I had seen before in any nugget form. The nugget shapes were the familiar foursome, but within the golden crust was a bevy of seasoned flakes, with the black pepper being the most prevalent. To the touch, they were thankfully not too greasy, and the thick skin held firm throughout the tasting. The interior chicken was similar, too, with the squishy yet juicy meat that partners so well with that crust. The main selling point shined through here, coming off plenty peppery with nice hints of garlic and a little dash of slow-building heat.

These are an automatic upgrade over the classic McNuggets, and makes me wonder what other flavors would work? I once had salt and vinegar wings in Hawaii, and I'd personally love to try McNuggets flavored like that. Who wouldn't?

Any good McDonald's meal begins with tackling fries first. While I did have some on hand, the first item I lunged for was Onion Rings. Out of all the items I ogled on the menu, this is the one that piqued my interest and appetite the most. Minnesotans got the rare chance to try Onion Rings for a limited time in 1977, and then there was the forerunner to the Chicken McNugget: Onion Nuggets, one of the discontinued items I dream of returning to stores. The Onion Rings before me hail from Australia, where they made their debut in 2021, but no longer appear to be on the menus Down Under.

This wasn't love at first bite, it was lust. These pleasantly plump rings had a super-crusty exterior, which led to an excellent crunch provided in each bite. The onion itself was well-cooked, and partnered nicely with its fried exterior. Even when they ran cold, they remained crunchy, and most importantly, delicious. They weren't overly salty, but remained flavorful enough that they didn't even remotely require the use of a dipping sauce. 

I can't remember how many came in an order, but the little white bag seemed to be filled with an amount that seemed endless, and yet, never enough, as they were so darn awesome. They're way better than the new onion rings Popeyes is selling, which are themselves a pale comparison to the OG Hall of Fame side.

It was now time to turn my attention to the dessert portion of the meal. My three items came together, and the most pleasant vision was the rare sight of McDonald's ice cream encased in a dipped coating, delivered in a handy cone holder. I knew I had to tackle it first, as one had a small crack and was already dripping that sweet vanilla ice cream. This particular treat goes by the name Salted Caramel Dipped Cone, which was first held by Koreans back in 2016, and previously dotted the Global Favorites menu in 2019.

When it comes to dipped cones, many parlors and ice cream trucks can do them, but to me the gold standard has been whatever Dairy Queen has been doing for ages with its iconic ones. Unlike its smooth-shelled ones, these McDonald's concoctions have a beautiful, symmetrical, wavy appearance, with a large tip at the top. The color was also very jarring, in the best possible way, with an orangey-brown coating.

This was another lust-at-first bite item. Obviously the ice cream did its usual amazing job of tasting fabulous, and even more so when encased in this robustly luscious caramel shell. Oddly enough, it wasn't all that salty, and actually tasted more like butterscotch than caramel. This isn't a complaint, but a pleasant surprise as it reminded me of the great Grandma McFlurry of 2024. Lastly, but not least, the cone was shockingly a sugar cone, and a fantastic one at that — not one of the airy and flaky wafer ones. Since I now know dipped McDonald's cones exist and work, when do I get to try some more flavors?

The McFlurry is another dependable dessert option, which always seems to work with whatever is mixed within. Salted caramel doesn't appear to be a main topper of U.S. treats but the Koreans had that flavor for dipping ones, and in 2019, it was a mix-in for a McFlurry. It hit the Global Favorites menu in 2024, alongside such familiar faces as the Salted Caramel Dipped Cone and the BBQ Bacon Stack.

This McFlurry doesn't look any different than most you've ever seen. A cacophony of colors and textures await the eye, where blacks and browns mesh — like a rocky terrain from a distant planet, nesting on a bed of white ice cream. My mouth instantly confirmed the quality confluence of textures the eyes detected, with the bits of Oreo leading the way. The salted caramel here didn't seem to match the flavor of the one that dipped the cone, but it added a good little pushback against the strong flavors the chocolate Oreo cookie provides.

Overall, it was a quality McFlurry. Did it stand out as something novel? Not really, but this non-novelty is one I'd have no problem revisiting again.

On name alone, I was a fan of McPops. It sounds like some affectionate name for a cherished Irish grandfather. This moniker has been in use since 2018, when McDonald's Spain was the first to bring to market these poppable, for lack of a better word, filled doughnut holes. They have been enjoyed and served around the world, with filling flavors to match countries' tastes. Outside of previous pop-ups at the Chicago HQ location, the U.S. is still waiting its turn for them.

At this given time, three flavors were being offered: Chocolate Hazelnut from Spain, Berry from Switzerland, and Dulce de Leche from Chile. You could order a three-pack of any flavor, or go the wise route with the variety three-pack, which includes one of each.

These McPops were plenty powdered, puffy, and soft to handle. I started with the Chocolate Hazelnut one, which filled a lot of the McPops center, and the combo was a winning one. I tried the Berry one next, which had an artificial-looking colored dough, and the taste followed through with its own fruity artifice. I didn't even bother with a second bite. The Dulce de Leche, as expected, was super sweet, but still a good little treat. I was surprised at how fresh they appeared and tasted. I was expecting more like a jelly-filled Munchkin from Dunkin' that tastes like it was made two days ago.

From what I was able to try, the two main sandwiches didn't seem to be large deviations from existing products. The BBQ Bacon Stack was basically a bacon Big Mac minus the middle bun, with a sauce that didn't seem to create any lasting food memories. The McCrispy was a fine sandwich, but I didn't even realize I'd had it once before. Perhaps next time we import it from Canada, we can ask that they drown it in hot honey sauce.

The best of the entrées were the Spicy Garlic Black Pepper Chicken McNuggets. They took a beloved standard and added a seasoned wrinkle that worked wonders. The garlic and pepper were an awesome flavor twist, and didn't even require sauces. If they're too hard to make, how about making a McShaker version, where we can douse them in seasoning packets. The Onion Rings from Australian McDonald's are the greatest things to hail from Down Under since "Bluey." These are a no-brainer menu add, and after they become a hit, McDonald's can bring back Onion Nuggets.

The Salted Caramel McFlurry was another solid entry, yet didn't feel unique. The rest of my taste testers didn't care for the McPops, but I'd be down to pop some more. I'd love to try them warmed up, which would only improve their appeal. As for the Dipped Cone, this is the one thing that should find a permanent space on the U.S. roster. Sundaes are fun, but melt quickly into a mess. The dipped cone brings similar flavors, but delivers them more cleanly, and without needing a spoon.

I hope to see some of these my favorite Global Favorites on U.S. menus soon. If not, I'll just have to hope to see them again on the menu the next time I'm in Chicago. I suggest you do the same.

Three other adults, two children, and I, ranging in age from 7 to 49, walked into this famous McDonalds location for lunch on a cool fall November day in 2026. All food was ordered onsite, using the handy McDonalds app, and paid for by me. Every item available at that time from the Global Favorites Menu was ordered for this taste test. The food was ordered in two rounds — entrées and sides first, followed by a round of dessert. The group tried each item and shared their feedback, which was noted.

Ultimately, the conclusions of this McUndertaking are based on my own opinions and tastes. I took into consideration my deep love of McDonald's food past and present, new flavors, and giving these items foreign-to-me a fair shake. The criteria I used to draw these conclusions were based on taste, texture, smell, familiarity, originality, uniqueness, international flair, outlandishness, and, in the end, figuring out which items are so wonderful that they deserve a spot on the everyday U.S. McDonald's menu.