Snack that saved a Japanese railway gets a whole new look for a limited time.

Japanese-born fast food chain Dom Dom Hamburger has a reputation for being edgier than most, with outrageous menu offerings that take things to extreme places other chains dare not go to.

▼ Now, Dom Dom is flexing its creative muscles yet again, with a new menu item called the “Nure Senbei Burger”

In all our years of eating fast food, we’ve never seen a burger like this. Instead of buns, it uses two pieces of “nure senbei” (“wet rice crackers”), a famous Japanese snack that Choshi Electric Railway, a local railway in Chiba, is particularly known for selling. As the name suggests, nure senbei differ from regular rice crackers in the sense that they’re delectably moist instead of crunchy, and they tend to be coated in a soy-sauce based glaze, making them a very left-field ingredient for a burger.

Dubbed a “miracle rice cracker”, as the struggling railway was able to survive through nure senbei sales after it began selling the snacks in 1995, Choshi Electric Railway’s variety comes in three flavours. Dom Dom doesn’t reveal which flavour of senbei is used in the new burger, though, so to solve that mystery, and find out what a wet rice cracker burger might taste like, we headed over to the Aeon Kaihin Makuhari branch to try it out.

It’s not easy to find the new burger, as the collaboration is limited to select stores in the Kanto region. Even at branches that do offer it, the promotional marketing tends to be kept to a minimum, as we found out at Aeon Kaihin Makuhari, where we only spotted a small mention of it on a laminated sign next to the till.

▼ New releases are usually advertised on giant banners outside this store, but this burger is only advertised on a small A4-sized poster near the register.

The burger is priced at 890 yen (US$5.93), or 1,290 yen as part of a set, and the ingredients are listed as: Two pieces of Choshi Electric Railway’s “nure senbei”, two meat patties, lettuce, cheddar cheese, a fried egg, special burger sauce and mayonnaise.

About five minutes after ordering the burger, our remote buzzer went off to tell us our order was ready, and we went off to collect the burger from staff. When we got back to our seat, we couldn’t stop looking at the “Nure Senbei” sticker on the packaging, which was a very weird sight for a burger, even of the Dom Dom kind.

▼ ぬれ煎餅 = Nure Senbei

We then unwrapped the burger to find…

▼ … a burger without bread buns!

The burger sat there staring back at us, with two wet rice crackers protecting its modesty, looking more like a couple of flat pancakes rather than senbei. Even though we’d read up on the burger and thought we knew what to expect, nothing could’ve prepared us for seeing the real thing right before our eyes.

▼ Curious to see what it contained, we lifted the nure senbei on top, and were surprised to find a large piece of…lettuce?

Nure senbei and lettuce aren’t two things you’d normally associate with each other, and neither is a fried egg, two meat patties, onions, and melted cheddar cheese, which were hiding out between the crackers.

▼ There was plenty of sauce on the bottom senbei too.

After inspecting the construction of the burger, we couldn’t help but be impressed at how well the senbei looked as a burger bun. However, after taking a knife to the burger, in an attempt to check the cross-section, we were surprised to find that the senbei totally resisted the pressure of the blade.

▼ The knife just wouldn’t cut through it at all.

Whereas a normal bun would give way easily, the nure senbei pushed the knife right back, reminding us of the strength of wet rice crackers, which aren’t easy to break apart. Determined not to be defeated, we persisted with the knife until we were able to somehow create a ragged cross-section, revealing it was much flatter than other Dom Dom burgers we’ve tried, which tend to be multi-layered feasts with a lot of height to them.

▼ After conducting our visual inspections, it was now time to get eating.

As soon as we bit into the burger, we knew this was going to be a very different fast food meal. The texture was unlike anything we’d ever experienced, with the nure senbei having just the right amount of moisture, soaking up the meat juices from the patties and the special burger sauce. The fragrant aroma of the soy sauce glaze was present in every bite, pairing perfectly with the egg, while the rich sauce added a mellow richness and the cheddar cheese brought everything together with a salty moreishness.

▼ It was way tastier than we ever thought it would be – who knew the meaty fusion of a burger and senbei could go together so well?

The burger was so good it didn’t take us long to devour it, but before polishing it off, we remembered we were here to solve the mystery of the nure senbei flavour. We’d come prepared with one of each flavour of the original senbei, purchased from the railway store before arriving, so we opened them up to try and identify which one was in the burger.

▼ Choshi Electric Railway’s nure senbei comes in three flavours: Red Rich Soy Sauce, Green Sweet, and Blue Light Soy Sauce.

So…which one of these was being used for the burger?

▼ Let’s start with the Red Rich Soy Sauce.

On its own, this senbei was incredibly delicious, but we held back on eating it all, instead taking small bites of it alongside the nure senbei used in the burger. Immediately, we could tell this one wasn’t it, as the aftertaste was stronger and obviously different.

▼ Next was Green Sweet.

The moment we popped this one in our mouth, we thought, “Could this be it?” It was very close, but after going back and forth between them several times, we started to sense that the aftertaste was subtly different.

▼ And finally, Blue Light Soy Sauce.

▼ Yep, this is it!

Or was it? Since we couldn’t completely rule out Green, we continued alternating between Green, Blue and the “Nure Senbei Burger” in small bites. This confused our taste buds even further, but in the end, we settled on the conclusion that for us, the Blue Light Soy Sauce was definitely the closest match.

▼ After this taste comparison, we also discovered another fun fact: the nure senbei used in the burger seemed to be slightly smaller than the standalone varieties.

This led us to believe that this nure senbei was likely to have been made specifically for the burger. As for the flavour, though, we ended up being right on the money, as the day after our visit, the chain announced that the flavour being used in the burgers was indeed Blue Light Soy Sauce.

The announcement gave us extra faith in our abilities as taste testers, and by our judgment, this is a burger that’s definitely worth trying. The creative concept behind the burger is matched by the skill used to execute it, creating a unique burger with a very Japanese twist that you won’t be able to enjoy anywhere else.

On sale from 10 August, the burger is only available at seven stores in the Kanto region listed below:

Sure, other fast food chains might test the boundaries of the burger by swapping out buns for rice patties, but only Dom Dom could reach for a wet rice cracker and show us that it deserves a place in the burger world. Hopefully the chain will be able to somehow give it a permanent place on the menu so that Dom Dom fans in other areas will be able to discover the joys of a Wet Senbei Burger.

Related: Dom Dom Hamburger
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