It’s real enough that you can eat it, but it won’t be a hamburger as we know it.
In Japan, people don’t just want their food to just taste good, they want it to look good too. This isn’t unique to customers at fancy fine-dining establishments, either, and even fast-food chains will go to great lengths to present their offerings in as aesthetic pleasing a way as possible.
So we were a little surprised when Burger King Japan proudly announced its newest burger, then slapped a big old censor mosaic over the first photos of it.
At first we thought it might be because the sandwich is too provocative for the general public, perhaps with an appearance as suggestive as McDonald’s Japan’s “adult cream pies” sounded. But it turns out the obscured photo is all part of Burger King’s plan to maintain mystery and allure for what it’s calling The Fake Burger. Even the official press release is keeping things extremely close to the vest, simply describing it as “history’s first unidentified burger.”
Left on their own to speculate, theories floated by Twitter users have included the prediction that the Fake Burger will use some sort of plant-based meat substitute, like the one introduced by rival chain Mos Burger earlier this year. However, most burgers of that ilk either try to imitate the brown of conventional meat, but the Fake Burger appears to be a golden yellow/orange. Another commenter guessed it might be some kind of sandwich/katsudon (pork cutlet bowl) hybrid, but since pork cutlet sandwiches are already a thing in Japan, calling one a “Fake Burger” would probably just be setting customers up for an anticlimactic disappointment.
What do we think the Fake Burger is going to be? There’s a potential hint in the price, which is only 290 yen (US$2.75). That’s 70 yen cheaper than a whopper, so it’s unlikely the Fake Burger contains any premium-price meats like pork cutlet or wagyu beef, or any fancy condiments that would also command a higher price. Plant-based meat substitutes aren’t cheap either, though, so they’re out too. That leaves us looking for a sandwich filling that’s not meat, inexpensive, and gold in color. Oh, and of course it also has to be tasty enough for Burger King to bother adding it to the menu. So what meets all those requirements?
Egg. Japan loves putting eggs in sandwiches, either as egg salad or as thick omelet slices, and you can find all-egg sandwiches in some bakeries and convenience stores. Using one in place of a hamburger patty, complete with bun, sliced tomato, and possibly other accompaniments, is something that hasn’t been done before, and so the Fake Burger being an egg burger seems like the most likely possibility, and also keeps with the poster’s promise that the Fake Burger is “warm, fluffy, and delicious.” We won’t find out for sure until the Fake Burger starts its two-week stay on the Burger King menu on October 23.
Source: PR Times via Entabe, Twitter/@BURGERKINGJAPAN
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