While everyone has his or her own preference on what ingredients make for a great burger, we can all pretty much agree on the proper construction method, right? Bread on the top and bottom, meat, vegetables, and condiments in between has pretty much been the standard for as long as anyone can remember.
Japanese hamburger outfit Mos Burger has been shaking up the burger blueprint this summer, though. This month, the chain released a burger that replaces its bun with two thick slices of tomato, and next month Mos is set to launch something equally unusual: a burger covered entirely in sauce, even on the outside!
We’d expect such craziness from Lotteria, the wild child of the Japanese hamburger scene, but Mos? The chain is so classy it serves its drinks in actual glasses instead of paper cups, and prides itself on making each sandwich to order.
Nonetheless, from August 3 you’ll be able to walk into Mos Burger locations in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture and order a nure burger, with “nure” being the Japanese word for “wet.”
Ordinarily, what makes Mos’ hamburgers special is the meaty sauce that’s slathered on the patties. In the case of the 280-yem (US$2.20) nure burger, though, the whole burger is submerged in sauce before serving.
▼ There’s also a slice of cheese, just in case the whole thing wasn’t gooey enough already.
But this is more than just an outlandish ploy for attention. Whether Mos Burger’s executives realize it or not, the nure burger is actually the culmination of culinary cues that circumnavigate the globe.
When Mos Burger was first getting started, the company’s founders didn’t use McDonald’s, the world’s volume-leader in hamburger sales, as their benchmark. Instead, they wanted to make something like Tommy’s, a local hamburger chain in the Los Angeles area established by Tom Koulax, the son of Greek immigrants to the U.S. Like Tommy’s, Mos was less concerned with offering the cheapest burgers than with offering especially tasty ones at a reasonable price. There’s also a parallel between Tommy’s signature item, its chili burger, and Mos’ meat-sauce-enhanced sandwiches.
▼ Tommy’s double chili cheeseburger
The type of sauce Mos is using for its nure burger is called Napolitan. A mixture of tomato sauce, ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce (and in the case of the nure burger, grated onion and garlic), Napolitan is a Japanese adaptation to local tastes of Italian tomato sauce, which is why its name is based on Napoli/Naples.
But why dip the whole burger in the stuff? Mos Burger cites the islak burger as its inspiration. A popular street food in Turkey, the islak burger, just like the nure burger, is covered in sauce, and its name also means “wet burger.”
So now we’ve seen how Mos’ nure burger is part of a chain that stretches from the U.S. to Japan, then on to Naples and Turkey. And if you head west from Turkey, you’ll arrive in…
…Greece, homeland of Tommy’s founder Koulax’s parents, who emigrated to the U.S., meaning that Mos’ nure burger has a connected lineage that wraps all the way around the planet.
Source: Mos Burger via Jin
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Insert images: Wikipedia/Wdwdbot, Mos Burger, Original Tommy’s, Istanbul.com, Wikipedia/-xfi- (edited by RocketNews24)