The McDonald’s Big Mac is more than a fast-food menu item. Since it debuted in 1967, the burger — which, as the ear-worm jingle notes, consists of “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun” — has become an enduring symbol of American culture.
The McDonald’s Big Mac is more than a fast-food menu item. Since it debuted in 1967, the burger — which, as the ear-worm jingle notes, consists of “two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun” — has become an enduring symbol of American culture.
Which makes the Big Mac an irresistible target for rival burger-slingers eager to challenge McDonald’s in a very public way. Recently, with inflation and other factors driving up fast-food prices, financially squeezed customers who had long relied on drive-through windows for cheap meals began questioning whether all those burgers, nuggets and fries were worth the double-digit tabs. McDonald’s this month reported a continuing drop in visits by lower-income diners in the third quarter of the year, pushing the chain to focus on offering discounts and value menus. Meanwhile, restaurants slightly higher up on the food chain have seen an opportunity to chip away at the veneer of the Golden Arches.
Last year, Chili’s introduced the Big Smasher, a burger it heralded with a marketing push challenging the “tiny drive-through burger” it was modeled after. And this month, Shake Shack launched its own salvo with its Big Shack.
Both brands made it crystal clear that these are Big Mac knockoffs, starting with the names, which bring to mind those 1990s Designer Imposters perfumes. (“If you like Obsession, you’ll love Confess.”) They also blatantly replicate the iconic elements of the original, especially the Thousand-Island-adjacent sauce.
The moves are bold, but are the copycats actually better? Washington Post food writer and in-house burger expert Tim Carman and I compiled their vital statistics, then sat down with a pile of burgers for a tasting and a conversation.
Emily Heil: When we were sampling all three of these, you and I had an interesting discussion about what these burgers are actually trying to do. Are they meant to mimic the classic Big Mac as closely as possible, or are they trying to do their own thing? First, I’m fascinated by the ways that the flavors of the Big Mac have become so iconic that you will see chefs using them in other, sometimes more upscale contexts. At Hi/Fi Taco on Capitol Hill, there’s a “Burger Night in America” taco with Big Mac-inspired filling, and at Boogey & Peel in Dupont Circle, the Harambe Loved Big Macs incorporates them into a pie. Le Diplomate’s Burger Americain is another riff.
I don’t eat a Big Mac often, but I’m a huge fan of its flavors — the bite of the onions and the tang of the pickle with salty cheese and the sweet-sour of the secret sauce? Chef’s kiss. However, I don’t love the burger’s architecture. The middle bun is bread overkill.
Tim Carman: I have to confess. The Big Mac is not my go-to burger whenever I visit McDonald’s. I feel like I’m eating a condiment sandwich. My preferred burger — by a significant margin — is the Quarter Pounder with cheese. For starters, there’s more ground beef in a Quarter Pounder — four ounces compared to two for the Big Mac, which just seems wrong when you think about it. But the beef is also fresh in the QP. It tastes like beef. The meat inside a Big Mac has no taste, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. It’s closer to mochi than meat.
EH: I agree that the meat is not the star of the Big Mac — it’s more of a delivery vehicle for the (delicious) toppings. Which brings us to our findings in this taste test. Let’s start with the Big Smasher from Chili’s. It wasn’t a straightforward copycat in terms of its composition. It doesn’t have a middle bun, and there’s only one patty, which is far heftier than the one the Golden Arches serves. But I have to say I find the name a little misleading, because it didn’t seem to me like a smash burger. It was plumper than you would expect for a smash, without those lacy edges, though it did have a nicely browned crust.
TC: It’s definitely not a smash burger — at least the samples we tried. They were more like steakhouse burgers. The size of the patty was nearly five ounces, and mine had some pink in the center, which indicates the cook wasn’t trying to render out every last molecule of fat in the meat. Yet! The burger had crispy edges, like a smash burger. That tells me the station cook let the patty griddle in its own fat, but without pressing down mercilessly on the meat. You could taste the beef, but it took a back seat to the Thousand Island dressing. The burger earned bonus points with me because it used diced red onions instead of the standard white onions. When it comes to burgers, I’m a red onion guy.
EH: And we have to talk about value, because that’s a big part of what’s driving these new menu items. The Big Smasher was the priciest of the three at $14.49 (it comes with fries). But if you dine in and the location is running one of its “3 for Me” specials, you can get a drink, an appetizer and the burger and fries for $10.99, which is even less than a Big Mac combo meal, at least at the location nearest our downtown D.C. office. And Chili’s is a sit-down experience, obviously, so I can understand how people would look at it compared to fast food and opt for what had previously seemed like a splurgier dinner choice.
TC: I wrote about the “3 for Me” deal last year when Chili’s was bucking the trend among its casual dining peers and actually attracting more customers. They did so by targeting fast-food diners, who might be looking for a small upgrade. If I lived in a part of the country that had few independent restaurants, I would definitely find myself at the bar at Chili’s, pounding down this burger.
EH: I’d be at the next stool! Okay, so let’s discuss the Shake Shack version. The Big Shack is structurally similar to its predecessor: It has two patties and a middle bun, though it deviates from the inspo burger with slivered onions instead of minced and a potato roll instead of the famous sesame seed bun. But it’s spiritually very different. The onions were sparse, and I thought the sauce was understated. Maybe our burger-maker just had a very light hand, but I didn’t get much of either. And to me, that’s the key to a Big Mac experience.
TC: Our experience with the Big Shack gets to the heart of the problem with these Big Mac riffs. They don’t taste like the real thing. But I don’t think the Big Shack is trying to mimic the flavors of the Mac. I think Shake Shack is borrowing the architecture of the burger — and even trading on the popularity of the world’s most famous fast-food dish — but filtering it through its own sensibilities. The beef is a proprietary Angus blend, custom-made by Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors. A Shake Shack flack told me the blend includes cuts of brisket and chuck, which is probably meaningless to most diners. More telling: As LaFrieda said during a recent phone call, the patty on a Shake Shack burger is the only one from a quick-serve restaurant that you’d actually want to eat on its own. He’s obviously biased, but I agree with him. The beef is deeply savory, almost dry-age funky, with the rendered fat solidifying into those crunchy edges that make smash burgers so delicious.
EH: I concede that the Shake Shack’s pedigreed beef is far, far superior to the squishy McDonald’s pucks. But I still preferred the Big Mac over the Big Shack, because if I want a Big Mac, the Shack is just not going to scratch that itch. Like I get that “Citizen Kane” is an objectively better movie, but sometimes I just want to watch “You’ve Got Mail” for the 103rd time, you know?
TC: I can’t tell you how much I love disposable cinema — the kind of movies that you savor one moment and forget the next. I have watched more mediocre Jason Statham movies than I care to mention: “The Beekeeper” forever! But when it comes to a burger, I want something memorable. Something that tastes like beef. I don’t want to get all wonky here, but given the many problems with beef production — land use, water use, methane emissions — I try to limit my intake of burgers. So when I bite into one, I want it to count. The Big Shack satisfies my craving.
EH: Fair. We should also note that none of these options are healthful by any stretch, but the Big Shack has 2,980 milligrams of sodium. (The Big Mac has 1,060 mg and the Chili’s version 1,440 mg.) Yikes.
TC: I drank more water than a camel after polishing off those burgers.
EH: And as we wrap up our conversation about the Big Macs and its knockoffs, can I just say, in the famous words of Kathleen Kelly, that while talking about burgers might seem trivial, “all this nothing has meant more to me than so many … somethings. So, thanks.”
Here’s how these three burgers stack up:
McDonald’s Big Mac: $6.99; 7.13 oz. (2 oz. beef)
580 calories, 45 g carbohydrates, 85 mg cholesterol, 34 g fat, 3 g fiber, 25 g protein, 11 g saturated fat, 1,060 mg sodium, 7 g sugar
Chili’s Big Smasher: $14.49 (with fries); 10.13 oz. (4.75 oz. beef)
950 calories, 49 g carbohydrates, 140 mg cholesterol, 64 g fat, 2 g fiber, 47 g protein, 24 g saturated fat, 1,440 mg sodium, 14 g sugar
Shake Shack’s Big Shack: $9.99; 11 oz. (6 oz. beef)
940 calories, 43 g carbohydrates, 205 mg cholesterol, 60 g fat, 4 g fiber, 56 g protein, 22 g saturated fat, 2,980 mg sodium, 10 g sugar
The post Chili’s and Shake Shack are coming for the Big Mac. Which burger stacks up?
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