McDonald’s Revives Cult McFlurry for Nostalgic Adult Children

McDonald’s U.K. menu has had a mixed week

McDonald’s’ monopoly on fast food news has been challenged in recent weeks as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods eye up its U.K. competitors, but the revival of a cult McFlurry on the burger chain’s U.K. menu could turn things around. The Smarties McFlurry is back — retired in 2015 to the groans of wistful kids and wistful big kids everywhere — with the Crunchie and Dairy Milk versions of the frozen, alabaster dessert that Eater critic Ryan Sutton called “one of the least worst things anyone can order at McDonald’s” tossed on the scrap heap, at least until an opportunity to revive them in search of virality presents itself.

Meanwhile, another mainstay of the U.K. menu is making Kansas City citizens extremely mad online, including the city’s mayor. That mainstay is McDonald’s nattily named, poetically licensed approximations of American regional specialities, and here the Kansas City stack is simply not doing justice to the region’s particular barbecue tradition; mayor Sly James telling McDonald’s to “stay in your lane (which is on the wrong side of the road btw.)” Fighting words. [Twitter]

And in other news...

• A dining survey found that 50 percent of respondents think the onus is on restaurants to make cancellation easier, as opposed to dealing with their own reservations. [Propel]
• “Is it possible to cook asparagus in a toaster,” said no-one ever, except... [Guardian]
• McDonald’s is sitting on the fake meat fence as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods continue to expand at the behest of fast food chains. [CNBC]
• Good tweets: