This article is part of our Cocktail Chatter series, where we dive into the wild, weird, and wondrous corners of history to share over a cocktail and impress your friends.
There’s an unwritten rule when it comes to indecision at any fast food drive-thru window: When in doubt, go with the item that’s in the chain’s name. At Burger King? Get a burger. Stumped and staring at the Taco Bell menu? Settle for tacos. It’s not always going to be a win, but it’s usually the safest move in each scenario.
Of course, there are chains that don’t have one namesake menu offering. The biggest fast food chain in the world, McDonald’s, comes to mind. While among the 40,000-plus locations around the world there are many country-specific food items, the chain remains uniquely American at its core. No matter which brick-and-mortar you find yourself in, you can count on it to carry chicken nuggets, hamburgers, apple pies, and McFlurries — assuming the ice cream machine isn’t out of service. Still, that doesn’t mean the bigwigs behind the Golden Arches haven’t attempted to change that narrative before.
Enter — drum roll, please — McSpaghetti.
This Town Needs Spaghetti
Reports vary as to when exactly pasta rolled out to McDonald’s in the States, but some evidence suggests that the McSpaghetti era spanned the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when the chain added pastas to its menu. There was the McSpaghetti (spaghetti and marinara sauce with optional meatballs), fettuccine Alfredo, and lasagna —
