SoraNews24 -Japan News-

We’ve never been ones to shy away from fast food challenges, and today is no exception. Today may well be Friday to the rest of you, but for the RocketNews24 team, and especially our champion eating machine Mr. Sato, today was and will forever remain the day that we took on the challenge of the 100 slice onion tower.

From the people who brought you the 1,000 cheese slice whopper and the 1,050 rasher bacon burger, we proudly present: The Onion Tower Challenge.

Just like in the west, Burger King in Japan is always happy to prepare burgers exactly as the customer wants it, adding and taking away whatever ingredients he or she desires. Starting today, however, Burger King Japan launched its “Bakudan Oniteri“, or “onion bomb”, campaign. Featuring a burger with five chunky slices of grilled onion drizzled with sweet and sticky teriyaki sauce, the Bakuoni burger should be more than enough for any man. Mr. Sato, however, is not just “any man.”

• In the Red Corner:

Mr. Sato

Worthy opponent in the 1,000 slice cheeseburger challenge, the 1,050 bacon rasher melee, and the current staff record holder for speed eating at Go! Go! Curry. He’s here, he’s ready, and you’d better believe he’s hungry.

• In the Blue Corner

This monstrosity

The Burger King Bakuoni, a traditional flame-grilled Burger King burger, topped off with five thick slices of grilled onion and slathered with teriyaki sauce, amounting to 935 kilocalories of pure hamburger goodness. To this, we added an additional 95 slices of onion to make a nice, round number and give our man a challenge worthy of him. With each slice clocking in at 18.5 kilocalories, would-be champions must work their way through a grand total of 2,692.5 kilocalories in just one burger. But when it’s mostly vegetables, it’s all perfectly healthy, right!?

With Mr. Sato warmed up and ready to roll, we prepared our cameras and settled in with our laptops, ready to document the event. This wasn’t going to be pretty, but we were prepared to stick by our man until the bitter end. Here’s how it went down.

– Catch me if you can!

Mr. Sato eyed the gargantuan package set before him. With the outer wrapped removed, the air in the office was immediately filled with the sweet, sickly aroma of grilled onions, and just the slightest hint of beef and teriyaki sauce. The kind Burger King staff took extra care to reinforce the tower in an additional layer of plastic to ensure that the burger kept its shape during transit, which, unbelievably, it did. The wrapper was, however, absolutely dripping with moisture thanks to the sheer amount of steaming hot onion inside.

Two words of warning to anyone who’s considering taking on this challenge at home: 1. Don’t. 2. These things get slippery!

This thing would evidently have to be handled like a ticking bomb, but the additional moisture didn’t make getting into it any easier. With the help of a cutter and some scissors, Mr. Sato slowly, carefully, started to peel back the inner wrapper and reveal its contents.

– Sweet, sweet onion

Not wanting to waste another second, our man broke into the enormous stack and in the blink of an eye he was gone, lost in a world of calories, carbs and chunky, tangy onion. The thick rinds of glistening white onion entwined with the sweetness of the accompanying teriyaki sauce unbelievably well, soaking up every drop of it. Grilled to perfection, the outsides of the onions were ever so slightly charred while the insides were left firm but succulent, making every bite a crunchy, if slightly moist affair.

Despite the fact that he was essentially just eating entire fistfuls of onion and little else, Mr. Sato ate undeterred. Stopping only occasionally to add a little extra teriyaki sauce to help it all slide down easier, he devoured pound after pound of onion. Clearly he’d been practicing.

– An onion too far. But this is not the end

Despite his promising start, our reporter started to slow around half way through his Onion Tower Challenge. Minutes later, with two thirds of the tower demolished, Mr. Sato shook his head and called it. “It’s still fine to eat,” he assured us, “but I’m just so sick of the taste.”

We have to admit, at that moment we felt a slight pang of sadness. It was like seeing Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid slip and put his back out while teaching us how to do a roundhouse kick. What had happened to our unconquerable eating machine? Was this the first sign of his retirement from the world of fast food gluttony?

Fortunately, Mr. Sato still had something left in the tank. True to his word that it wasn’t the amount that lay before him so much as the sheer monotony of consuming the same mouthful over and over, our man grabbed a saucepan and a portable stove. Throwing the onions in and adding a little water, he softened them up just enough to go perfectly with a nice big gyudon beef bowl.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Mr. Sato, you, sir, are a machine.

If any of you happen to see this man tomorrow, we recommend keeping him at a distance of at least 10 feet. All that onion is going to take a while to get through his system.

We’ll leave you now with a video we shot of the entire onion adventure. We hope you’ve already eaten because this isn’t especially pretty.

[ Read in Japanese ]