The assignment was hush hush.

I was ushered into the back of a nondescript office building in the North York suburbs. The rules were easy to follow — no photos, no videos, no tweeting, no telling anyone anything until the agreed upon embargo was lifted. I then sat down at the back of an empty restaurant and bit into McDonald’s version of the Beyond Meat burger.

All this secrecy may seem a bit much. After all, A&W started selling Beyond Meat in Canada a year ago, supermarkets this past May and Tim Hortons this past summer (though they’re now scaling back to just Ontario and B.C.). However, this is McDonald’s and a multi-billion-dollar food franchise is secretive about any new product in development mode.

Dubbed the P.L.T. (plant, lettuce and tomato), the sandwich consists of a Beyond Meat patty specifically created for McDonald’s so it doesn’t have the same flavour as other Beyond Meat offerings. It is topped with a slice of processed cheddar, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, onions, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise on a sesame seed bun and costs $6.49.

And it tastes just like a typical McDonald’s burger.

On Sept. 30, it will be available for a 12-week trial period at 28 McDonald’s locations in southwestern Ontario, but none in Toronto. The region has been a regular testing ground for McDonald’s for decades, says Michaela Charette, head of consumer insights. So London, Sarnia, Woodstock, Aylmer, Ingersoll, Exeter, Strathroy, Tillsonburg and St. Thomas, will be the first communities to serve the Golden Arches’ version of the Beyond Meat burger. Customer feedback will determine if the burger is ready to be served on a larger scale.

McDonald’s Canada chef Jeff Anderson is responsible for developing and testing Canadian-exclusive menu items such as the McAngus burger and the fish and chips launched earlier this year. He said this burger was created at the company’s global office. He couldn’t say how many iterations McDonald’s and Beyond Meat went through before coming up with this ready-to-test version. But he did say that part of the reason the P.L.T. tastes so similar to traditional McDonald’s burgers is because it is topped with the condiments McDonald’s diners are familiar with: finely chopped lettuce and onions, floppy little pickle slices, more-sweet-than-tart mayo, and the ketchup and mustard that’s unique to McDonald’s, all on the familiar soft sesame seed bun with its slightly sweet aftertaste.

The P.L.T. sandwich contains 460 calories, 25 g of fat, 7 g of saturated fat and 920 mg of sodium. Strict vegetarians and vegans should note that while you can opt for no cheese, the veggie patty is cooked on the same grill as the meat patties and eggs.

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