Journal Standard comes up with a burger that’s anything but standard, and also inordinately delicious.

Japanese fashion brand Journal Standard’s offerings are actually a good fit for the company’s name, consisting largely of stylish but understated designs of the sort that would be perfect to clothe yourself in as you quietly sit on a park bench and record your daily musings in your leather-bound writer’s notebook. So it’s kind of surprising that J.S. Burgers Cafe, its sister enterprise, is prone to occasional displays of wildly exuberant decadence.

You may remember J.S. Burgers Cafe from the times when the chain unveiled its Ghostbusters Burger, or perhaps the period when it was serving up milkshakes garnished with full-size donuts and churros. Now J.S. Burgers Cafe has added what it calls the Super Cheese Burger to its menu, and one look confirms that it is super indeed.

The Super Cheese Burger uses two types of cheese, cheddar and camembert. But rather than slather both of those on the patty, where they’d mix together into a single hybrid cheese, the restaurant’s chefs came up with a revolutionary way to let both types of cheese keep their distinct flavors: by putting two thick wedges of camembert on the absolute top and bottom of the sandwich, where the halves of the bun would ordinarily be.

However, this isn’t a breadless burger, like the Wendy’s Wild Rock that we ate earlier this month. There’s still bread in the Super Cheese Burger. It’s just in the very center of its stack of ingredients.

The Super Cheese Burger was actually offered once in the past, and following a long absence made its triumphant return on August 14. We swung by the J.S. Burger Cafe branch in Tokyo’s Shinjuku, near SoraNews24 headquarters, on the afternoon of August 14 to find, to our sadness, that the burger was already sold out for the day. So we came back again on August 15 as soon as the restaurant’s doors opened at 11 a.m., thereby insuring they could accommodate our order for the 1,380-yen (US$12.50) sandwich.

Thankfully, burgers in Japan always come in a paper wrapper to keep your hands clean, so gripping the Super Cheese Burger doesn’t leave any cheesy oils on your hands. We opened wide and took a bite, and found that not only did everything taste great, the sandwich keeps its structural integrity as you eat it, and the slice of bread in the middle goes really well with all the cheese without making the meal’s texture unpleasant at all.

The Super Cheese Burger also comes with a side of maple syrup, which seems in keeping with its “anything goes” attitude. We poured some on, and found that it made a great accompaniment, drawing out some of the salty notes of the cheese. Honey would probably do the trick too, but maple syrup is the better choice to pair with the meaty flavors of the patty (it’s easy to forget, but yes, the Super Cheese Burger does have meat in it too).

As we happily continued our meal, we realized that while it seemed crazy at first, the Super Cheese Burger actually makes a lot of sense. After all, if you don’t really want a lot of cheese, why are you ordering a cheeseburger in the first place?

Really, the only downside is, as we mentioned above, that the sandwich tends to sell out very quickly. On the other hand, that gives you about the best excuse you’ll ever have for eating a cheeseburger for breakfast.

Restaurant information
J.S. Burgers Café (Shinjuku branch) / J.S.バーガーズ カフェ（新宿店）
Address: Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Shinjuku 4-1-7 3rd floor
東京都新宿区新宿4-1-7 3F
Open 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. (weekdays), 10:30 a.m-10;30 p.m. (Saturday), 10:30 a.m.-9;30 p.m. (Sunday, holidays)
Website

Photos ©SoraNews24
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