A thin layer of mayo spread across the bun prevents the bun from getting soggy. Too much mayo is worse than a soggy bun!
Edit: No love for A&W here? Although I like Wendy’s, A&W is a special treat for cheap fast food burgers.
Yeah, I think that’s the conclusion I’m coming to with Wendy’s: as I said above, I used to like their burgers, and I’ve wanted to like their burgers, but, at least for the last decade, they’ve always tasted bland to me, and I suspect that may have to do with the salting of the meat. A McD’s burger, at least since the 00s, has always hit the spot for me in the way a Wendy’s burger doesn’t. (But, as said before, damned good spicy chicken sandwich!)
Blech. Tried one yesterday and it was definately salty like other have noticed. Couldn’t notice any other difference so it tasted like an over salted QP to me.
I’m 46 and go to McDonald’s waaay more often than I should (I pass one on the way home from work), but have never had a Quarter Pounder. My usual order is 2 hamburgers with either fries or some chicken nuggets, and when I’m throwing dietary caution completely to the wind I’ll go for a Big Mac (I loved the recent, short-lived return of the Mac Jr). I don’t think I’ve had any of their other sandwiches in decades. The hamburgers do tend to be a bit salty, but there’s something about them that’s just right. And for breakfast there is no other contender: a sausage biscuit* with hash browns** can’t be beat.
*(*Without cheese. I love cheese, but I don’t like McDonald’s sausage biscuits with cheese – or their cheeseburgers – because they taste like cheese sandwiches to me. And I want them to taste like sausage biscuits or burgers.)
(*I actually very rarely get breakfast from McD’s so at first I was super excited about the “all day breakfast” thing, but there was always a wait for hash browns – at least, when the whole thing started – so I quickly stopped trying to get them later in the day. These days I seem to always forget that they’re available.)
Like many others, my favorite burger is from Wendy’s: a single with mayo, ketchup, and pickle. Yummm. And while McD’s has the best fries, I really like the ones from Wendy’s. And, they have Frostys! I rarely go to Wendy’s, though, because there aren’t any convenient ones along my usual routes (the closest one to me, which I also pass on the way home from work, annoyingly has the entrance on two side streets). It’s probably just as well. 
I never even think of Burger King for hamburgers, because I don’t like the flame-grilled flavor. I *love *an original chicken sandwich and some onion rings, though. BKs are the rarest of fast food places around me; it’s been years since I’ve been to one.
After reading and replying I had another chance to sample their double 1/4 lb burger (again w/ mac sauce, not ketchup and never ever with mustard). After trying one in light of this thread, I have to say it does taste more like a burger, and most likely how a burger should taste, it did taste juicer/perhaps greasier and had more liquid, basically more like a Wendy’s burger. However I think I would like the old taste back, as that is not the McD’s burger I know.
McD’s has always has had a unique, impossible to duplicate flavor that when we were kids and hungry we were given that stuff and told it was food. Our minds grew around that ‘crack’ the Clown was pushing and we have grown addicted to it on a level so deep it would take many years of therapy to undo. OK a bit exaggerated, but point made, the flavor that makes it uniquely McD’s is dimished, and it’s a more common burger, the juices even waterlogged a portion of the bun.
It is possible that the flavor is just diluted, just as dry aged beef is more flavorful then wet aged, adn I do wonder of this allows a quarter pounder with more liquid/less beef overall, thus giving us even less meat then the frozen ones.
Rally’s is by far the best fast food burger. The seasoning is just right.
Speciality places are better. But they charge more.
Wendy’s, Rally’s, Burger King, and McDonald’s all roughly charge about the same.
Sink-o the mayo? 