What is McFish? Greg Kelly’s ‘male Karen’ McDonald’s story has Internet talking about mystery dish not on menu

Kelly wrote, ‘I just went to a MACDONALD’S and there was no MCFISH on the menu.  When the hell did that happen?’

Greg Kelly took to Twitter and recounted an incident that he claims happened at McDonald’s (Wikimedia Commons and Getty Images)

What exactly is a McFish? Is it an Irish aquatic species or something else altogether? This is what Twitter was left wondering about on Thursday, February 4.

Journalist Greg Kelly of Newsmax, a conservative American news organization, shared a seemingly angry rant on Twitter. Kelly wrote, “I just went to a MACDONALD’S and there was no MCFISH on the menu. When the hell did that happen? Is it permanently banned? Or is just my ‘local’ MACDONALD’S. I demanded to see the ‘manager’ but they accused me of being a ‘MALE KAREN’ so i walked out.”

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It’s unclear if Kelly was being serious about his experience or if it was just a joke. But whatever it was, it did get people talking about this fabled “McFish”. For the record, McDonald’s does not have or never had any product called “McFish”. It does, however, have the Filet-O-Fish, a sandwich that is made of a fish fillet with tartar sauce and a half slice of cheese on a steamed bun. 

According to reports, In 1962, Lou Groen, a McDonald’s franchise owner in Cincinnati, Ohio, was desperate to save his business, the first McDonald’s in the Cincinnati area, when he came up with the idea. A USA Today report says that his clientele was heavily Roman Catholic and in those days, most Catholics abstained from meat every Friday, as well as during Lent. 

A McDonalds’ restaurant sign is seen as the restaurant is closed due to the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on April 19, 2020 in Southampton, England (Getty Images)

Groen thus came up with the Filet-O-Fish, a sandwich that would save his restaurant and eventually be consumed internationally. “Frisch’s dominated the market, and they had a very good fish sandwich,” recalled Groen in 2007. “I was struggling. The crew was my wife, myself, and a man named George. I did repairs, swept floors, you name it. But that area was 87 percent Catholic. On Fridays, we only took in about $75 a day. All our customers were going to Frisch’s. So I invented my fish sandwich, developed a special batter, made the tartar sauce, and took it to headquarters.”

“My fish sandwich was the first addition ever to McDonald’s original menu,” he said. “It saved my franchise.”

In fact, the only other official fish dish on the McDonald’s menu was the Fish McBites — small pieces of whitefish dipped in batter and deep-fried and served with tartar sauce. They were reportedly taken off the menu at the end of March 2013. 

So, McFish is not a real thing. And this became a reason to criticize Kelly again. Not just for McFish but also for his misspelling of McDonald’s. One Twitter user even wrote, “My Joker origin story is that I wanted a MCFISH and was called a MALE KAREN.”

Before he was the host of ‘Greg Kelly Reports’, on Newsmax TV, Kelly was the co-host of ‘Good Day New York’ on Fox 5 NY WNYW from 2008 to 2017. Before that, he was the co-host of ‘Fox and Friends’ and also the White House correspondent for Fox News. Kelly is also a retired lieutenant colonel in the Marine Forces Reserve. Kelly was on active duty between 1991 and 2000. He was an AV-8B Harrier jump jet pilot assigned to Marine Attack Squadron 211, the “Wake Island Avengers”.

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