As the old adage goes, you never know what you've got until it's gone. I was struck by the lightning bolt of loss this week, after ordering a grilled chicken salad from McDonald's on Buckland Street in Westpark.

I visited the McDonald's Drive Thru on Monday afternoon and ordered a grilled chicken salad and a medium McCrispy meal with a bottle of Tropicana orange juice.

I then drove my chicken dinner back to the office, before liberating it from its cardboard packaging with all the vim of Tom Hanks cracking open a coconut in Castaway.

The McCrispy burger was the first to fall prey to my jaws. The 484 calorie chicken burger, served with iceberg lettuce and black pepper mayonnaise could not be faulted. That said it doesn't come in for much praise either. To exploit some of my culinary nomenclature - it was basically alright.

After getting the cut of the McCrispy's jib I turned my attention to the grilled chicken salad. Two chicken breasts, which McDonalds boasts are '100% chicken', lounged upon a bed of lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion rings. As accoutrement the dish was accompanied by something that was alleged to be a balsamic dressing.

McDonald's had kindly provided me with cutlery with which to see off the salad. Stamped upon the tools were the words: "Made from Paper."

I wondered whether chopping down trees for forks, rather than making them out of plastic, might be a bit of a triumph of some ecological accountancy. If you know the answer, drop me an email.

My tree fork was a feeble friend in the face of the robust chicken and Houdini lettuce. I couldn't see the point in it, literally. It was too blunt to be of much use.

After retrieving a real fork from the office kitchen the work of eating could be commenced with proper. I soon loomed over the salad armed with my steel trident as Poseidon might the sea.

And like a god of Greek myth I was disappointed by the world below. It wasn't terrible or anything, but it was, I realised, a substitute. A second rate replacement for my lost love, the Waitrose Greek Style Salad.

The balsamic dressing was a thick gloopy thing, that more closely resembled barbecue sauce than any salad dressing I'd ever seen. The chicken was far less interesting than it's McCrispy cousin that McDonald's had entombed between sourdough-style sesame topped buns.

The words of Waitrose rang loudly in my head, as jarringly as a ringing phone belonging to someone who never bothered to change the factory default volume and vibrate settings.

"Our Café area is for customers purchasing food there, rather than in our store. However, managers can use their discretion - for example if a customer has dietary requirements that can't be met by our menu."

Could I return to the Waitrose cafe and claim to be gluten free? Lactose intolerant? Fussy? No, I resolved, it was time to move on. For it is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. I had rebounded from one replacement salad to another, but it had taken until this moment to realise it.

Oh and McDonald's isn't that cheap anymore either. My modest chicken burger with a drink more modest still, and some fries, totalled £5.45. In terms of value, I'm sure a decent bacon bap can be picked up for half that price. I'll have to investigate.