Fast Food Nastiness

[GeneChing]

There's a Secret McDonald's Sandwich You Can Only Get at Exactly 10:35am
You need to get *really* specific for this one.

By Jelisa Castrodale Updated on September 25, 2023

Last fall, superstar Dutch DJ Tiësto collaborated with Canadian singer Tate McRae on “10:35,” a dance banger apparently inspired by an ultra-luxe resort in Dubai. In an interview with Hypebeast, Tiësto said that the song is meant to evoke “that changing point in time when it switches from day to night,” adding that “as soon as you hear ‘10:35,’ everything changes from day to night.”

That may be the case if you’re a superstar DJ who drops collabs with the kind of resort that has a Michelin star restaurant and a $100,000-per-night Royal Mansion suite, but when the rest of us hear 10:35, we usually think, “Dang, it’s too late to get breakfast at McDonald’s right now.” But apparently, when you see those four magical digits on your phone display, what you can get is the McBrunch Burger, which is only available for a few short minutes every day.


JAKUB PORZYCKI / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

According to in-the-know TikTokers, the “McBrunch Burger” is a glorious combination of McDonald’s breakfast menu — which its U.S. restaurants stop serving at 10:30 a.m.— and its rest-of-the-day staples. The McBrunch burger involves two cheeseburger patties, bacon, eggs, and a hash brown on top of a sesame seed bun, and you can only get this meal-straddling menu item in the sweet spot between when McDonald’s is wrapping up its breakfast service, and it’s starting its lunch rotation. And if you want to get ultra-specific, the eggs are preferably scrambled, not the round eggs used on McMuffins and other breakfast sandwiches.

In a wildly popular TikTok about the McBrunch Burger, Tommy Winkler posted himself ordering the burger — which did take a bit of finesse with the McStaffers on duty. (Some other TikTokers have had to order both a breakfast item and a Double Cheeseburger and then built their own McBrunch Burger.)

This isn’t the first time a “secret” 10:35 McDonald’s order has made its way around the internet. In September 2010, a post in Reddit’s r/food described a burger called the “Mc 10:35,” which involved stacking an Egg McMuffin – or at least the egg and meat from the McMuffin — on top of a Double Cheeseburger.

About the same time, the now-defunct Consumerist website also covered the Mc 10:35. At the time, a San Francisco McDonald's worker told the outlet that the sandwich was "getting kind of a cult following" in the Bay Area.

On another Reddit thread about the Mc 10:35 three years later, a McD's team member just grumbled about the idea that McDonald's had a "secret menu" at all. "There's no such thing," they wrote. "We can make any combination of food we have. It's not a secret that we use our condiments and meats in weird ways when you ASK."

We're gonna guess that a lot of people have been asking for a McBrunch burger in the past few weeks. We also seriously hope that one of them is Tiësto.

A secret McD sammy with a cult following? Cults are weird.

[GeneChing]