Lotteria craziness continues with the new okonomiyaki burger

In the crowded Japanese fast food burger industry, a chain has to establish an identity to be successful. McDonald’s is the place to go to fill up as cheaply as possible. MOS Burger is for people willing to spend a little more time and money for a sandwich made from higher-quality ingredients. And Lotteria is the place to go for a side of craziness.

While Lotteria occasionally goes completely nuts and has iconic horror movie characters work its registers, the chain’s eccentricity is primarily confined to the menu, with items such as the side-by-side double-patty twin burger and colossal Evangelion cheese burger with roughly a week’s worth of meat. The chain’s newest offering reimagines the savory Japanese crepe okonomiyaki as a burger.

The word okonomiyaki literally means “grilled things you like,” and consists of flat-grilled shredded cabbage, egg, and an assortment of other ingredients chosen by the diner, all topped with a sweet sauce and often mayonnaise and shaved bonito flakes s well. It’s especially popular in the cities of Hiroshima and Osaka, with residents of both cities claiming that their town is the original home of the dish.

▼ Okonomiyaki

Two different versions of Lotteria’s okonomiyaki burger went on sale on August 19. The hanjuku tamago includes a soft-boiled egg, while the modern style comes with stir-fried noodles and a fried egg.

On paper, it’s hard to fault Lotteria’s logic. Okonomiyaki and burgers are two mainstays of Japan’s cheap eats arena, both with strong flavors from their ingredients and sauces. Shouldn’t a little bit of gastronomic synergy be the natural result of simultaneously hitting your taste buds with multiple things that taste great?

Of course, I once thought the same thing about birthday cake and beer.

Sandwiched between the buns of the okonomiyaki burgers is something Lotteria has dubbed the okonomiyaki patty. We’ll get right to the point here. The okonomiyaki patty is not okonomiyaki.

If we had to call it something, we’d say it tastes and feels like Satsuma age, the fish cakes originally from Kyushu. There’s nothing wrong with Satsuma age. It’s a popular food that you can buy at supermarkets and specialty stores all over Japan, and if Lotteria wanted to call their new sandwiches Satsuma age burgers, we’d have less to complain about.

But we couldn’t help but be disappointed as we bit into the okonomiyaki burger and there was a party in our mouths without the headlining ingredient invited. Without anything that tastes like okonomiyaki itself, the whole experience is empty.

At least in the modern version okonomiyaki burger the sauce and shredded cabbage that are always a part of okonomiyaki are present and accounted for, as is the mayonnaise that many people add to theirs. Unfortunately, the noodles are dry and lacking in flavor.

Lotteria is now 0 for 2 in impressing us with their noodle sandwiches. In May they released a ramen burger in a collaboration with popular ramen chain Menya Musashi. While we had fun taking it apart and watching out iron-stomached reporter Mr. Sato chow down on an extra-large portion, in the end the various flavors in the sandwich clashed with each other, and eating it once was enough for us. We’d hoped Lotteria had stepped its game up in the months since, especially since the chain is definitely capable of making tasty food such as their shrimp and zeppin (“absolute”) cheese burgers, either of which we’d rather have than the okonomiyaki sandwiches.

That said, the basis of okonmiyaki is that different people like different things. If you’re still intrigued, the okonomiyaki burgers will be available until late September, at a price of 320 yen (US$3.20) for the hanjuku tamago, and 290 yen for the modern style.

Just bring us back a shrimp burger, OK?

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Insert images: Hitosara, RocketNews24

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