“Pocket Cheese:” McDonald’s Restaurants Offer Up a Unique Menu Item in Italy
Portable cheese? Move over Babybel.
Get ready to be very jealous of a unique value item served in Italian McDonald's: a tiny brick of parmesan cheese. That’s right. At participating restaurants, guests can purchase the mini dairy treat at McDonald's across Italy.
It’s well known that McDonald’s designs their menus to cater to unique palates across the globe. So well known, in fact, the restaurant chain ran a North American campaign featuring international favorites like the Stroopwafel McFlurry of the Netherlands in North American restaurants through April 2020. However, this pocket parm quickly caught the attention of TikTokers late last year.
From Parm to Table
TikTok user @ariopastaclub, posted a video unwrapping the snack in early September 2021 — with several other users following suit, sharing their experience with the Parmesan Reggiano — capturing an impressive 6.1 million views.
Other users, mostly locals, took to the comment section confirming that the treat is common among throughout Italy.
One person replied, “we had it in vending machines at school.”
“ Yep we actually do,” an Italian users writes, “It’s really good and it only costs 50 cent haha.”
Are we getting tiny blocks of cheese or not?
It doesn’t look like we’re getting Parmigiano Reggiano any time soon in North American restaurants. But, the cheese remains popular despite its exclusivity. In fact, this isn’t the first time the brick of cheese has found fame on TikTok.
Posted in late March, TikToker @_amberjs shared a clip of her McDonald's excursion in Italy, racking up 3.2 million views 184.8K likes from its initial debut.
In the short video, the snack can be seen as a listed menu item valued at a reasonable €1 (About $1.08 USD). However, the TikToker did not get a chance to try the dairy treat, citing she “wanted to but flew back [home].”
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