Szechuan Saturday- No Sauce for Me!

In the summer of 1998 the Disney movie Mulan was released. That same season, McDonald's released a limited-edition promotion sauce called Szechuan sauce for the chicken nuggets. I may have actually had this sauce when it was first released. I was after all, eating McDonald's on the regular and chicken McNuggets were my favorite. Apparently, now they are called, "chicken tenders." #fancy

I kid you not, the movie was on TV just today. 

Today, October 7th 2017 at 6AM, almost 20 years later, my brother Casey and I sat at a table at the one McDonald's location in order to get just a packet of this long-ago discontinued sauce. 

A series of events have led us to this place. One exists from an assumed marketing manager for either Disney or McDonald's back in 1998 who thought of an Asian-inspired sauce would help promote a cartoon film. The second is that in 2017, another cartoon, Rick and Morty, a favorite among me and previously mentioned brother, made an obscure reference to the sauce on their season 3 episode. The reference really had little to do with the plot and could have been any random sauce from the past. I am personally reminded of the Rodeo Cheeseburger which was a promotional sandwich at Burger King for the movie Wild Wild West, starring Will Smith. 

Apparently the sauce became in high demand due to the reference on the show and McDonald's responded by re-releasing in very limited quantities, this sauce, along with 7 others. The Szechuan sauce itself recently sold online for upwards of $15,000 for a jug of it, that to my knowledge was expired. Fast forward to this morning at 6AM where I, a 32-year-old father, and my 25-year-old sibling await a potential number to reserve our place in line, to come back at 2PM to get a packet of sauce. 

Yes, a single dunker packet of a sauce that was discontinued for reasons other than being too popular back in the 90s. 

Though there were other prizes waiting for the people willing to stand in line, however, the main thing in my eyes was to taste this rare sauce and live to write about it. Well, I will give you the ending now, I did not achieve this. Instead, I, with 5 other people, brother included, were turned away after waiting for hours to receive this number. The manager of that current shift told us that the "other manager" has the stuff and she wasn't releasing numbers until 1PM. Yes, this announced at 8AM, the time of the original release. 

So, I left with little plans of returning. After all, I have priorities. 

My brother went back, unable to get the sauce but a consolation prize instead. 

Now, what this means, and why this is relevant to a pizza blog is the concept of supply and demand of something as seemingly insignificant as sauce. 

Obviously, the supply at the McDonald's was very small. There were only like 2-3 sauce packets released at the one McDonald's in my entire town where there is 16 locations alone. Yes, 2-3 packets in one location for a college town with a population of over 250,000, but on a game day, probably over a million. Today is a game day. 

This brings the ratio of people in location to sauce packet extremely low, extremely improbable and putting my brother who waited in line at no. 31 as close as anyone came to getting one. 

McDonald's created a demand for a supply that was unmatched.

Now, why could I not make a pizza at home, unique and rare and have it in high demand by others? 

Well, for one, there is not a popular, cult TV show promoting my home-baked goodness and another is that pizza made at home doesn't come with any form of achievement for those who were lucky enough to obtain it. My pizza would be made by request if someone wanted it badly enough, thus reducing the demand because it is so easy and therefore assumed to be low quality. 

People will justify what they are willing to invest in. They will also justify what they are willing to wait for. My brother and I waited and I am at least writing about it to justify my behavior. My brother got a consolation prize to tell his own kids someday, a justified reward per our conversation as soon as he got it. 

I am writing for pizza. I have been waiting for this pizza for weeks. My memory holds this particular pizza place in high esteem due to both quantity and rarity of availability. The demand is high because the recalled quality is good and because I have waited for weeks to pull this name out of my plastic TupperWear. 

Ramos Pizza- For a look at the menu. I will warn you though, you'll want to buy, eat, and nap. 

 "Home of the World Famous Pepperoni Cream Cheese Pizza"

Yes, this classic to my brothers and I's previous binge of a "cheat day" we used to justify when living together. This is still talked about today as one of our all-time favorites. My favorite was their cream cheese-pepperoni for which even when I weighed almost 300 pounds could I eat more than half a large pie. This a testament to the quality and richness of the ingredients. All factors that create more demand. I suppose that the hundreds of fans that read this today will almost increase the demand and they will then need to supply.

Summary:

Price: Another standard $15 per medium for which we ordered 2. 

The toppings: Pepperoni Cream Cheese (duh, it's world famous) and the Mac and Cheese with bacon (duh again on the meat). 

The experience: This day and age, your online order game has to be tight, and this place is. The pizzas roll up, look good, felt heavy, all good signs of a quality pizza. 

The Flavor: Alright, here is where we run into the theme/problem of the day. Just like I failed to get my Szechuan sauce, I also failed to get enough on these pies. Both pies struggled with their dryness. The crust was homemade, as indicated by its bubbly imperfections (a plus) however then there was not enough sauce to balance this out. The toppings were good either the cream cheese and pepperoni or even the carbs on carbs macaroni and bacon on the authentic crust, however the pizza lubricant was lacking. I needed more. I did order some extra marinara for dunking after my initial test however this was nothing more than some generic packets that did not taste good, however the packet quality to no exact fault of the restaurant, they did not make them. 

The aftermath: I had a few slices, but the pizza wasn't good enough to "fill up on," so it was easy to walk away. It was also easy to leave behind large pieces of crust for which the toppings seemed to stop short on. Two medium pizzas for 3.5 people left over one half of a medium in total. In pizza currency, the pizza wasn't good enough to push someone into an even semi-uncomfortable feeling to experience taste.

Today, a day of sauces. Sauces I did not get. Sauces nobody got but yet everyone expected. I was going to settle on a decent quantity of pizza sauce on my high quality pizza, but again was turned away by the manager. At least on the pizza I didn't have to sit in a fast food restaurant for hours to hear it.

The pizza was good, which is about average and a sad comparison to a fast food pizza restaurant, which my memory argues with from times before.