Takeaway Truth is an occasional Lifehacker feature where we compare marketing images against what you actually get served. Today: Mad Mex’s Naked Steak Burrito.
Fast food restaurants have been known to gild the lily when it comes to accurate depictions of their menu items. Far too often, the mouth-watering feast on the poster turns out to be a limp and oily morsel. In a bid to keep the fry-jockey overlords honest, we’ve decided to document the reality of fast food — it was either that, or go postal like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.
A few years ago you couldn’t pay an Australian to go into Taco Bell. Today, Mexican takeaway food has become one of the nation’s most popular choices, with Guzman y Gomez and Mad Mex on the top of the healthy eating list.
As its name implies, Mad Mex’s Naked Burrito is a bowl of burrito fillings minus the bread wrap. Positioned as a low-carb option for weight watchers, the Naked Burrito comes with an option of different meats (chicken, steak or pork), black beans, rice, cheese, lettuce, sour cream and salsa.
Here’s a side by side comparison of how the Steak Naked Burrito compares to the menu image:
Instead of lovingly placing the steak on top of the bowl, our food preparation worker dumped a crap-load of colourless lettuce on top which obscured everything else from view. When we took a closer look at the steak, it’s not surprising they wanted to bury it:
Compare the huge, deliciously rare cuts of steak in the poster to the gristly morsel above. All the meat in our meal looked the same.
Of all the Takeaway Truths we’ve done, the Naked Burrito has probably been the healthiest and most delicious. But when it comes to accuracy, our serving kind of stunk.
Truth Rating: 6/10
Which fast food franchise or menu item would you like us to tackle next? Let us know in the comments section below.
Comments
6 responses to “Takeaway Truth: Mad Mex “Naked Burrito””
It doesn’t matter what food product you purchase, the picture will always look better than the actual product. You couldn’t have chosen a less appealing picture of the Naked Burrito to upload, it just looks gross on the fork, looks a lot better in reality.
That still looks pretty dang nice to me
Stupid name too. It’s not a burrito, it’s a salad.
Its a naked burrito.
If I eat a spoonful of peanut butter, am I eating a naked peanut butter sandwich?
Only if YOU are naked
I’m eating one right now and I don’t care how it looks. It is goddamn delicious.
Actually this one looks like false advertising.
The meat in the photo is obviously prepared by grilling, slicing and serving on top of the item, the meat in yours was obviously stewed or fried up already sliced.
There are certain liberties they can take when photographing food, but something like this is blatantly illegal.
again with the generous score! you REALLY need to be harder on these bastards.
I don’t care what it looks like, It is delicious. After reading this I think i’ll grab one at Southern Cross on the way home.
6/10 is a pretty generous score …. maybe for the next one you can compare it to gomez y guzman ?
I love mad mex, their Grande Melt with a mexican cola is a guaranteed lunch any time i go into sydney 🙂
This article would be much better if it looked at the nutritional content of the meal vs the claim of “healthy food”.