Ever hear of McCafe? This a McDonalds version of an upscale coffee house. They started these a year or 2 ago and I believe are putting them in city central locations. There's one on Queen St. That I walk by all the time, so today, in no mood to mess around in food courts, I decided I'd give it a shot. It's at the front of a nice McD's (or Mackers as it's called here) in an older restored building. The McCafe counter is at the front and offers specialty coffees, nice sandwiches and wraps, cakes and pastries. (Not hot apple pie in a box either). The McD counter is at the back. To separate the 2 there are tables at the front with big open windows that are geared for the Cafe customers. There are only 3 tables however, so I grabbed my lunch and headed upstairs where I could inconspicuously people watch. The building had a beautifully ornate ceiling and some other features common in Victorian style that, suprisingly, McD's hadn't covered with a PlayPalace or something else hideous.

Got a little surprise when I sat down though. Birds. Yep, little sparrows or something (I know seagulls and pigeons and it wasn't either of those) were flying around and stopping for lunch at the empty tables. Some of you may have heard my story from long ago about a bird in the sink in Ireland.... it was a traumatizing event to wake up and find a bird stuck in my kitchen sink and, well I just can't retell the whole story without getting worked up, so we'll leave it. The jury's still out on whether he was kamikaze or it was foul play. Anyway, since then, I haven't so much liked birds so to have these little buggers flying around and within a tables length of me really didn't help my lunch go down. They were tiny little vultures circling until I finished and they could attack.

That being said, McCafe failed to impress me. Shocking, really.... The food was fair, the atmosphere was horrible and the prices were no better then Starbucks or any other place. But it was an experience. I'm glad I gave it a go at least to see what it was all about. The one thing it did have going for it was that it didn't name everything McExpresso or McCarrot Cake. Their restraint impressed me.