We try the ugliest looking burger in Japan.

These days, the food world is catering to social media like never before, putting appearances first in all sorts of colourful, eye-catching ways in the hopes of going viral online.

Fast food giant Burger King has proved time and time again that it likes to walk a very different path to its competitors, however, and is therefore throwing looks out the window for its latest release, with the Cheese Ugly Beef Burger.

We headed down to Burger King to try the new release when it became available in Japan on 11 September, and according to posters around the store, the main ingredients contributing to the ugliness were buns made with four types of cheese: Gouda, Egmont, mozzarella, and cheddar.

According to Burger King, this burger is more delicious than it looks, and is said to be irresistible for cheese lovers, as the cheesy buns “stimulate the desire for cheese” in every bite. As diehard cheese lovers, this sounded like it was right up our flavour alley, and we couldn’t wait to rip the wrapper from the burger and gaze upon its ugliness.

As soon as we unwrapped it, it drew us in with rich aromas of grilled cheese that instantly distracted from its decidedly messy appearance. The fragrance was strong and enticing, increasing our anticipation and raising our expectations for what lay ahead.

They weren’t wrong in calling this an ugly burger, as the buns looked like they’d been roughed up in a bar fight, scarred with discoloured patches that gave it a tough, rugged appearance.

Despite its rough exterior, there was a lot of goodness to be found inside, though, with pickles, lettuce, fresh tomatoes, onions, cheddar cheese, a flame-grilled beef patty and ketchup and creamy mayonnaise.

While some might look at this and call it an ugly beast, beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, and from the eyes of a cheese lover, this meeting was love at first sight. We gave the firm buns a tentative bite and found that when we chewed, the aroma of baked cheese was released for a tantalising moment. Taking a bigger bite gave us another hit of strong cheese, which mellowed out beautifully when combined with the fresh ingredients beneath its buns.

Every bite was like a flood of umami for the taste buds, sending us into waves of delight that had us yearning for more of everything it had to offer. This is definitely a fantastic burger for cheese lovers, thanks to the ugly cheese-mottled buns, which actually contain only a third of the dough usually used for buns, with the rest of the weight made up in delicious cheese.

The Cheese Ugly Beef Burger retails for 740 yen (US$6.97) and is only available in Japan for a limited time. It’s surprisingly much tastier than it looks, and now we’re tempted to try all of the chain’s other burgers sandwiched in between ugly cheese buns too!

Images: ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]