Recently our Southeast Asia correspondent Kowloon Kurosawa took a trip from his current residence in Cambodia to the neighboring country of Vietnam. Following standard RocketNews24 foreign travel protocol he soon made his way to a Burger King in Ho Chi Minh City.
However, what he found surprised even our cholestorol-hardened reporter. This Burger King has a special combo menu called Rice King. Not only that but it contained a teriyaki tonkatsu combo!
The Rice King menu has five different main dishes severed alongside a wad of rice, sliced tomato and cucumber, and dipping sauce. They are Chicken Tenders, Fried Chicken, “Beef Steak” (actually hamburger patties), Mexican Drumlets, and Tonkatsu (Fried Pork Cutlet). Each combo also comes with a medium drink and soup.
Kurosawa unfortunately couldn’t order the Tonkatsu Combo because he was on a diet. RocketNews24 generally discourages such health-conscious outbursts of free-thinking in our employees but with labor laws they way they are what can we do? Thank you very much Yasuhisa Shiozaki.
Instead Kurosawa ordered the “Beek Steak” with teriyaki sauce set for 50,000 dong (US$2.30) because it was the only one that wasn’t deep fried…which is kind of like choosing Cherry Coca-Cola because it has fruit in it.
After a three-minute wait, the Rice King had arrived. Unfortunately it wasn’t served on a spartan yet exotic looking wooden board like in the menu. Kurosawa didn’t really expect that anyway, but it definitely would have been a nice touch. Instead it came in a cheap plastic bowl.
As far as taste, there wasn’t really much to report. The flavor of everything was good enough with nice sauces and seasonings. The hamburger patties, however, were quite dry. This wasn’t really surprising either though as they were just sitting there exposed without any accoutrements aside from a drizzling of teriyaki sauce. Still, for the price he got a fair bit to eat along with air conditioning which is always nice in Vietnam around this time of year.
After returning to Cambodia, Kurosawa felt a pang of remorse that he didn’t try the tonkatsu and sought out a Burger King in Phnom Penh. Sadly they didn’t have a Rice King menu, but if one thing is certain in life, things always change.
Original article by Kowloon Kurosawa
Photos: RocketNews24
[ Read in Japanese ]