I tried Cardi B and Offset's McDonald's date-night meal and think the chain should break up with celebrity collaborations

The Cardi B & Offset Meal costs $20.39 and includes both celebrities' favorite McDonald's menu items.

Cardi B's favorites include a cheeseburger, barbecue sauce, and a large Coke, while Offset lists a Quarter Pounder with cheese and a large Hi-C Orange Lavaburst as his go-tos. The meal also includes a large fry and an apple pie to share.

When I first heard about the meal, I was admittedly a little disappointed. This is the latest McDonald's celebrity meal combo to not include any new menu items.

The highly popular Travis Scott-inspired "Cactus Jack" meal — a standard Quarter Pounder with cheese, bacon, and lettuce, fries, and a Sprite — included no new items when it was released in September 2020. However, the meal cost less than the individual items would usually: $6, excluding tax and fees.

Saweetie's meal, which was released in August 2021, also didn't technically include any new items, but it at least called on customers to customize their Big Mac by adding fries to the sandwich.

The most innovative celebrity meal, in my opinion, came from BTS' collaboration in May 2021. The meal came with a brand-new Cajun sauce and sweet-chili sauce for the nuggets and fries. The sauces were hand-picked by the members of BTS and inspired by the menu of McDonald's in South Korea. The sauces were strictly limited-edition, and some fans spent upwards of double the regular cost of the meal on resold McDonald's bags and sauces from eBay.

Compared to previous meal collabs, the Cardi B and Offset meal seemed underwhelming to me. As someone who tests a lot of fast food, I've tried all of these menu items before, and while the price is slightly cheaper than if you were to order them outside of the meal combo — I spent $22.36 to try it before its official release date on February 14 — I was hoping for something a little more creative.

Nevertheless, I decided to give the meal a shot. I ordered all the items together in a bid determine whether it's actually worth ordering.

While I love a Quarter Pounder as much as the next person, I wish the meal would have incentivized some sort of customization.

It would have been much more exciting to try a new topping like bacon or lettuce, like in the Travis Scott meal, or add some sort of sauce to the burger. Instead, it was just a standard Quarter Pounder with cheese.

I liked that the burger included two slices of cheese, and the onions were cut into large slices rather than diced.

The meat was juicy, the sesame-seed bun added the right amount of texture, and the toppings brought a lot of flavor. However, while it was tasty, I was begging for something new and exciting, and this menu item simply didn't deliver that.

I feared this burger would be even more boring in terms of flavor profile than the Quarter Pounder with cheese.

It comes on a regular bun, rather than a sesame-seed bun.

"Whether it's going for a date night or grabbing a bite after late-night studio sessions … I'm always asking Offset to take me to McDonald's," Cardi B said in a press release announcing the meal. "And now, Offset and I have a meal named after us! I want all my fans to try it – especially with that BBQ sauce."

However, given that the burger already comes with a generous amount of ketchup and mustard, the result of my decision to add the barbecue sauce was a slightly soggy bun.

However, if I was actually ordering this meal to split with a friend or date, I know both of us would be fighting over who gets the Quarter Pounder with cheese — by all accounts, it's the better burger of the two.

While the cheeseburger might work as a quick bite, I'm not sure it impresses as a date-night entrée.

McDonald's fries are among my favorite fast-food menu items, so I was happy the meal came with a large fry for sharing.

The slightly sweet barbecue sauce complemented the salty flavor of the fries, as well as the savory taste of the burgers.

Again, I assumed you were supposed to cut it in half to enjoy it with someone else. However, given that the McDonald's apple pie isn't necessarily huge, I thought two desserts might have been more fitting.

The apple slices were flavorful and crisp, and the crust was flaky. However, it again felt very basic to me. Perhaps a small vanilla ice cream or a McFlurry would have made this choice of dessert feel more intentional and creative.

You can customize your order to include a drink of your choice, but I decided to stick to Cardi B and Offset's choices.

From the two burgers to the fries dipped in barbecue sauce, the meal itself was very savory. I felt that the sweet drink offset — pun not intended — the meaty, smoky taste of the Quarter Pounder and cheeseburger.

While I personally didn't need two large drinks, I could see this being an asset to someone actually ordering this for a "date-night" meal.

Compared to past McDonald's celebrity meal collaborations, this one landed somewhere in the middle. While I liked the size of the meal, and the idea that it's meant to be shared with someone else, some of the choices felt a little underwhelming.

I wish the burgers had been more customized, and I also felt that instead of a cheeseburger, the second burger option could have been a little more substantial. I know that if I was sharing this meal with someone, we could potentially go to blows over who gets the Quarter Pounder — a less-than-romantic scenario, in my opinion.

When it comes to celebrity meal collaborations, I hope that McDonald's shifts its strategy by choosing more creative customizations or making the price a little more incentivizing. If they can't do that, perhaps the chain should break up with celebrity meals for the time being.

Insider reached out to McDonald's for comment but did not get an immediate response.