Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
burgers (Page 20)
This year, one of our favorite Japanese monsters has returned. Gigantic and terrifying, we still can’t help but cheer at its reappearance, even as we realize it’s likely to destroy us.
Are we talking about Godzilla? No, our dark idol is far tastier: the Mega Burger Pizza.
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.
We recently paid a visit to the Pikachu Café in Roppongi, where we dined on, among other dishes, a hamburger shaped like the electrically charged Pokémon mascot. But while we found ourselves craving seconds, we weren’t sure we felt like waiting in the restaurant’s long line again.
So instead, we decided to make our own Pikachu Burger by reverse engineering and remixing what we ate in Roppongi, and today we’re sharing our recipe with you. So join us after the break for this easy recipe and a step-by-step guide to building your own pika-tastic burgers!
One of Japan’s most loved snack foods has got to be onigiri. Both a staple of mom’s home cooking and convenience store cuisine, these little balls of rice wrapped in seaweed come in enough flavors and styles to satisfy everyone. They’re even so delicious they have driven some people to armed robbery.
Personally during these summer months these rice balls are especially satisfying. They’re good because in this intense heat it can be hard to stomach greasier fare like cheeseburgers.
However, now Circle K Sunkus stores have stocked themselves with a Bakudan Musubi Bacon Cheese Hamburg (Pepper Mayo Included). Containing everything in the title and then some, I didn’t hesitate to grab one of these curiosities and try it out.
Here at RocketNews24, we’re no strangers to the culinary charms of extremely meaty hamburgers. Time and again, we’ve seen chefs in Japan push the burger envelope by offering increasingly massive sandwiches.
Today, though, we’re looking at the polar opposite: a bun-based sandwich with no meat at all. While a lack of beef may run counter to our baseline burger beliefs, there’s one important detail that turns this from sacrilegious to scrumptious.
The patty has been replaced by potato chips.
Long ago, fast food chain Wendy’s poked fun at the meager size of some restaurants’ hamburgers with a series of commercials asking “Where’s the beef?” Whoever came up with that advertising slogan would be proud of the chefs at a new restaurant in Tokyo’s Shibuya, which serves a cheeseburger so massive we had to ask, “Where’s the bun?”
A lot of people in Japan start to feel down in the dumps in May, as the excitement of the new jobs and school years they started in April gives way to a daily drudgery with the next public holiday months away. For us, though, May has suddenly become the happiest month of the year so far, with the return of McDonald’s Japan’s massive four-patty Mega Mac on May 19.
Here at RocketNews24, we try to stay one step ahead of the latest burger trends, however. Sure, everyone’s excited about having extra meat now, but what if the next big thing is less meat? Could we order our Mega Mac with no meat, or anything else, for that matter?
As it turned out, not only was McDonald’s willing to indulging us in our minimalistic burger experiment, they even got in on the process by offering us some advice.
Japan loves cheering on its sports teams in international competitions, and with the World Cup just a few weeks away, soccer is set to dominate TV programming, advertising, and the national consciousness in general.
If you’re not personally a fan of the Beautiful Game, you might feel a little left out of the conversation for the next couple weeks. So since you won’t be using your mouth for talking, why not stuff it with some of the 14 new World Cup-themed menu items McDonald’s is rolling out in Japan?
Here at RocketNews24, we’re all about forming stronger connections between Japan and the rest of the world. Incidentally, we’re also all about burgers and fried foods.
Sometimes, the planets align just right, and we get to check all three boxes at once, like we did today with our taste-test of McDonald’s new pork cutlet burger, a Westernized version of Japanese dish inspired by Western cuisine. And since the only thing better than a fried pork sandwich is two fried pork sandwiches, we’ll be comparing it to the nearly identical menu item from hometown hero Mos Burger.
Do you love burgers and enormous, skinless giants? How about sexy studs Eren and Levi from the super popular Attack on Titan? If you answered yes to any–or all–of those questions, then you better get to your nearest Lotteria this Friday, because supplies for the limited-edition mini-towel and plastic file are…uh…limited!
Also, we’d really like a milkshake while you’re there.
At midnight on April 1, everything you can shop for in Japan got a little bit more expensive as sales tax rose to either percent. Thankfully, this three-percent hike was announced well in advance, giving consumers a chance to stockpile staples such as toilet paper, detergent, and other dry goods ahead of time.
Unfortunately, there’s one other necessary yet perishable staple of our lifestyle that we couldn’t hoard: hamburgers. With the amount we eat, that extra three percent of tax works out to a pretty hefty chunk of change.
Thankfully, at the same time as the tax increase took effect, so did a new McDonald’s Japan policy offering free double portions of pickles, onions, and sauce on the chain’s sandwiches.
On January 7, McDonald’s Japan started rolling out its new American Vintage menu items, with the first batch inspired by the diners of the 1950s. Our recent taste test of the fast food giant’s Classic Fries with Cheese left us less than impressed, what with a cheese sauce that didn’t taste like cheese and their ineffective “bacon flavored topping,” which McDonald’s is at least kind enough to admit isn’t the genuine article.
Still, the Golden Arches managed to lure us back to give its American Vintage menu another shot with a very persuasive offering. Two very persuasive ones, actually, in the form of the two beef patties in its Diner Double Beef burger.
There may not have been any Thanksgiving festivities in Japan this past week, but the Japanese language’s ample opportunities for puns gave us two special days to celebrate. Coming on the heels of Knee-High Socks Day was the equally pun-tastic Good Meat Day on November 29.
Good Meat Day gets its name by breaking the date into its individual digits of 1-1-2-9, which can be read as ii niku, literally “good meat.” We decided the best way to commemorate our carnivorous cravings was by hitting Burger King to catch the tail-end of their all-you-can-eat burger promotion.
One of my closest friends recently visited Japan with his wife, and we made plans to get together to sip fine cognac and discuss neoclassical philosophy (OK, canned Ebisu beer and Japanese sports cars). Since they were staying in a hotel with an awesome view of the city, we held our high-minded symposium in their room while admiring Yokohama’s gigantic Ferris wheel.
My friend asked how much all our convenience store-bought booze would run us at a restaurant, and I told him it would depend on whether or not we took advantage of the all-you-can-drink specials that many offer. “Free refills on beer? That’s awesome, but you could never get away with that in the States,” he responded.
It’s a crying shame that he already flew back home, because if he’d stuck around just a little longer, he’d have been able to experience another gastronomic experience unique to Japan: all-you-can-eat burgers at Burger King until December 1.
Whether the blooming of the cherry blossoms in spring or the chirping of cicadas in summer, in Japan there is always a herald to the changing of the seasons. As incorrigible carnivores, for us fall begins when McDonald’s tsukimi burger returns to the menu. Tsukimi literally means “moon viewing,” a popular autumn activity in Japan, but in this case refers to the lunar-looking fried egg the sandwich contains. The tsukimi burger also comes with bacon. It has no linguistic reason to be there, but if you really need an explanation as to why someone would add bacon to a burger, we’ll be happy to explain after you finish your quiche.
Of course, the full moon has been known to do strange things to people’s minds, and we wondered if we couldn’t scavenge components from McDonald’s tsukimi burger to make something even better.
In the crowded Japanese fast food burger industry, a chain has to establish an identity to be successful. McDonald’s is the place to go to fill up as cheaply as possible. MOS Burger is for people willing to spend a little more time and money for a sandwich made from higher-quality ingredients. And Lotteria is the place to go for a side of craziness.
While Lotteria occasionally goes completely nuts and has iconic horror movie characters work its registers, the chain’s eccentricity is primarily confined to the menu, with items such as the side-by-side double-patty twin burger and colossal Evangelion cheese burger with roughly a week’s worth of meat. The chain’s newest offering reimagines the savory Japanese crepe okonomiyaki as a burger.
Here at RocketNews24, we like to keep abreast of the pioneering developments in the separate but equally important fields of technology and hamburgers. Having already marvelled at the fries holder from McDonald’s and recently hearing that Burger King had developed a hands-free Whopper Holder, we were immediately filled with a level of avarice that usually makes people buy a pair of overalls and move to the Yukon to pan for gold.
Unfortunately, Burger King’s shoulder and neck-mounted hamburger holder is only available as a giveaway for customers lucky enough to win one, and since the promotion isn’t being held in Japan, we were left with only one option: design and built one of our own.
For those of us born without trust funds, there will be precious few purchasing decisions in life where cost is no object. As a result, it’s important to take advantage of, and savor, that rare opportunity to purchase the very top of the line, whether it takes the form of preferred parking or double-ply toilet paper.
Or, as it did for us at RocketNews24 recently, McDonald’s most expensive Quarter Pounders ever.
With so many hamburger chains in Japan, each has to find a way to differentiate itself from the others. For example, MOS Burger prides itself on its high quality ingredients, and Freshness Burger tells diners right up front where its priorities lie.
With Lotteria, there are two things we’ve come to expect; multiple patty sandwiches, like the nine-layer Evangelion Q burger, and unconventional ingredient pairings, as seen in the chain’s ramen burger. But Lotteria’s newest offering combines both of the restaurant’s signature sales points.
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