We continue our tradition of pushing the limits of our local Burger King staff’s kindness by ordering a double Whopper topped with around 80 bucks worth of pickles.
Burger King
Some of you may remember us reporting on a new promotional campaign by Burger King for their new Big King 4.0 burger. Called the Big ( ) Discount it is assumed that bringing in a Big Mac or receipt from a Big Mac will knock 120 yen (US$1) off the price of a Big King.
However, aside from pictorial allusions nowhere do they explicitly state that it has to be a Big Mac. They simply offer a discount for a “big something-something,” so our reporter Seiji Nakazawa went to his local Burger King with a bag full of “big” stuff such as candy and Mr. Big albums in the hopes of big savings. You’ll be surprised how for it got him.
For companies in the fast food hamburger business, there’s no way of getting around the fact that they’re in competition with McDonald’s. So instead of trying to tiptoe around the situation, Burger King Japan has decided to try to tackle its rival head-on with the new Big King 4.0 sandwich, which Burger King has just introduced to the Japanese market.
If you’ve got burgers on the brain, the name Big King no doubt reminds you of McDonald’s Big Mac, and that’s fine with Burger King. As a matter of fact, thanks to an unusual promotion going on right now, Burger King will give you a discount on a Big King if you bring in a receipt showing you recently bought a Big Mac, or, even stranger, if you bring in the actual McDonald’s hamburger itself.
If you’ve gone on a few overseas trips, you may be familiar with the phenomenon of travel poo, wherein your stool takes on a different hue for a few days as you adjust to local ingredients. It’s far less common for the opposite to occur, but that’s what seems to be happening with Burger King’s black burgers, which have become a repeating success story in Japan.
Burger King is currently offering its darkly colored sandwich in the U.S. and the U.K., but many are reporting that while the company turned the burger’s bun black, the burger is turning their poo green. But what’s behind this transformation, and why didn’t it happen in Japan?
When Burger King Japan first brought out its black burgers, more than a few people were shocked, and even a little intimidated, by their sinister appearance. After diners got over their fear and tried them, though, they discovered they were pretty tasty, and they’ve now become a welcomed, sporadically appearing item on the chain’s menu.
Seeing how well that gamble played out, Burger King has decided to spin the roulette wheel once again, but this time they’re betting on red with two new sandwiches with crimson buns and cheese. So how do they taste? We decided to grab the pair and try them for ourselves.
When Burger King first rolled out its black hamburgers in Japan in 2012, we thought the company had gone insane. It turns out Burger King really is crazy…crazy like a fox. And not just any fox, but some sort of super-intelligent fox with an advanced degree in marketing, since the black burgers caught the attention of media outlets around the world and were such a hit that they’ve been brought back in multiple updated forms.
The black burgers will once again be returning to Japanese Burger King locations in 2015, but before they do, this summer the chain is debuting a line of bright red burgers with crimson cheese and something called “Angry Sauce.”
Recently our Southeast Asia correspondent Kowloon Kurosawa took a trip from his current residence in Cambodia to the neighboring country of Vietnam. Following standard RocketNews24 foreign travel protocol he soon made his way to a Burger King in Ho Chi Minh City.
However, what he found surprised even our cholestorol-hardened reporter. This Burger King has a special combo menu called Rice King. Not only that but it contained a teriyaki tonkatsu combo!
April Fools’ Day, every prankster’s favorite event of the year, is just around the corner, but what kind of amusing tricks will we see this year? Fast-food chain Burger King seems to be well prepared already, announcing a delicious meaty smelling perfume for their burger-loving customers, to be sold exclusively on April 1.
In Japan, the New Years is traditionally a time for eating osechi cuisine, and while tastes and lifestyles may be changing, come New Years Day, many people will be eating at least some of these special new year foods. And once all the new years festivities have passed, it’s quite understandable if some of the Japanese public ends up yearning for something a bit more oily and rich. Well, Burger King Japan has just announced a new series of menus that just may fit the bill in such a situation. It’s Burger King Japan’s new “cheese fondue” menu, featuring items that allow you to create fondues out of … you guessed it, hamburgers!
The moment it was unveiled earlier this week, dozens of English-language blogs and news sites slammed Burger King Japan’s new seasonal offering, suggesting that the very notion of a hamburger topped with berries and slathered with a sweet pink sauce sounded about as appetising as a sweetfish hotdog served with a side of sick.
Aside from the occasional slice of pineapple, it is indeed rare to find fruit slipped between a hamburger’s buns, but knowing how well meats like turkey and pork go with sweet and sticky glazes and sauces, we at RocketNews24 remained optimistic that Burger King was not in fact trying to kill us with its latest creation, and headed down to try it for ourselves.
And as it turns out, the Premium Berry burger is actually kind of awesome.
For a country known for its restaurants serving relatively small portions of foods, Japan sure seems to love all-you-can-eat campaigns (although occasionally, things don’t go quite as planned at these events). Well, if you love meat and lots of it, we have good news for you. Burger King Japan’s popular all-you-can eat Whooper campaign is coming back again this year, so get ready to have your fill of big, juicy hamburgers!!
Burger King recently launched two new hamburgers in Japan that feature black buns and cheese with matching squid ink black sauce. Ads, like the one above, made the burgers look pretty unappetizing. But the burgers, known as the Kuro Diamond and Kuro Pearl, look even worse in reality.
Here are some examples:
Regular RocketNews24 readers will no doubt already be aware that fast food chains in Japan like to mix things up every so often by giving their buns a splash of colour. In the past 12 months alone, we’ve seen McDonald’s present a Sakura Pink teriyaki egg burger in time for the cherry blossom, and last October Burger King rocked a Black Ninja Burger which sported charcoal-black buns and a huge tongue-like slab of bacon.
This week, Burger King has taken its worship of the darkness a step further with two more jet-black offerings: the Kuro Diamond and Kuro Pearl, which feature not just black buns, but slices of cheese and a tangy sauce that look dark enough to swallow any would-be diners whole.
Every now and again, the Japanese branches of McDonald’s roll out what they call the Big America burgers. Each one is named after a place in the US and has a subtle nod to the region through its ingredients, such as the chili-soaked Texas burger.
The thing is, in the U.S. we don’t call that a Texas burger, we call it a chili burger. Likewise, going into anywhere other than a Japanese McDonald’s and asking for a Broadway or Idaho burger is going to leave the staff confused and you hungry.
It’s always seemed a little strange that there’s no California burger, since that’s an established dish with a standard recipe, being avocado slices on a burger. Well, if McDonald’s won’t do it, Burger King Japan will, and even without a tip of the hat to the Golden State, their new lineup of burgers is packed with avocado.
Burger King Japan has just announced the “60th Anniversary ‘B’iKing Battle,” inviting anyone with the stomach and speed for eating seven Whoppers in half an hour to apply. Sounds pretty sweet, right? Maybe…we have a feeling the grand prize is the last thing participants will want to receive after polishing off two-days’ worth of calories.
Japan has always had a knack for taking Western ideas and turning them on their head, churning out some weird and wonderful gems in the process. So it’s not surprising that the fast food world in Japan is an absolute goldmine of unusual creations and bizarre taste sensations. From towering burgers to chocolate sauces, we take a look at some of the most mind-boggling limited edition releases we’ve seen in Japan over recent years.
Burger King has raised some eyebrows with its latest menu addition in China, called the “PooPoo Smoothie.”
The drink as similar to a Taiwanese boba tea, or bubble tea, and has pulp-like “pearls” inside that are supposed to “explode in your mouth upon consumption,” according to the Daily Meal.
It’s no surprise that the fast food market is a competitive one, particularly in Japan where restaurants go to great lengths to create the most unique items to bring in the customers.
This time, Burger King Japan has announced a new breakfast line-up of unique items not often found in fast food joints. At the head of this new seven-item menu is the wonderful Spam & Cheese for 260 yen (US$2.54).
And now, due to popular demand, we have the taste test you’ve all been waiting for: the King’s Dog from Burger King. Ever since news of the hot dog offering from the fast food burger chain was released, we’d been anticipating its arrival. Boasting an extra-large sausage 2.5 times the thickness of a regular Burger King hot dog, we bought one of each to really see how the King’s Dog weighs up.
Hot on the heels of McDonald’s Japan’s announcement of its spring-themed Sakura Teriyaki Burger, Burger King Japan has just revealed a new product of its own, and it looks to be quite the mouthful. This, ladies and gentlemen of the cholesterol-loving world, is the King’s Dog (and yes, that’s “dog” without an “n”, boys at the back), which packs in roughly five times the meaty goodness of a regular Burger King hot dog.
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