We visited the all-you-can-eat KFC buffet restaurant in Japan before the official opening day and found more than just fried chicken on the menu. There’re also pastas, soups, breads, sweets, and even an all-you-can-drink beer plan!
fast food (Page 39)
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.
Earlier this week, our hearts were Kentucky-fried aflutter over the news that KFC will soon be opening an all-you-can-eat buffet in Osaka. As it turns out, though, that’s not the only big development for the restaurant chain. Right now, the world’s most popular fried chicken outfit has added something to the menu of its Japanese restaurants that we never thought we’d see at KFC: hamburgers!
Yaki udon, a Japanese stir-fried noodle dish made with thick, flat wheat noodles, is a popular and much-loved staple of Japanese cuisine. Both yaki udon and yakisoba—a similar dish which uses a thinner buckwheat noodle instead—are cheap, tasty, and readily available from many street food stalls and Japanese-style pubs). So when one of our RocketNews24 Japan reporters read that not only had a yaki udon restaurant opened up in Kenya, but that it was that it was a huge hit with the locals, he just had to check it out for himself.
Read on for our Japanese reporter’s restaurant review as he travels halfway across the world for a bowl of noodles.
There’s no denying McDonald’s Japan has had rough time these past few years, with incidents like the spoiled meat scandal contributing to declining sales. To complicate matters further, some of the fast food chain’s campaigns and initiatives, like the sudden removal of menus from its counters (which have since been reinstated), have been met with confusion if not outright anger from Japanese customers. Now, it seems McDonald’s has captured the Japanese Internet’s attention again with what could well be their strangest campaign ever.
McDonald’s Japan will be releasing a new line of “affordably priced” burgers on October 26. And while that’s all fine and well, it’s their special one-day promotion in which they’ll be giving away these new burgers for free that has been raising eyebrows due to its bizarre catch.
Our Japanese reporter Ahiruneko is an admitted gari (pickled ginger) maniac. Whenever he goes into a sushi restaurant he’s sure to polish off as much of the pink sweet and sour flakes as he does actual sushi. Yes, for Ahiruneko, sushi just wouldn’t be sushi without gari.
But one day he heard some troubling news. Word had it that Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Russia were selling a chicken sandwich topped with gari. “What are the Russians thinking?!” thought our reporter as he set out in search of these mythical creations…
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?
In a lot of ways, Japan’s equivalent to the hamburger is the beef bowl, or “gyudon” as the locals call it. Tasty, fortifying, and cheap, beef bowls are so prevalent and popular in Japan that they essentially have their own strata in the personal food pyramids of many college students and bachelors.
Realizing that much of its customers’ bodies are literally made out of beef bowls, Japan’s largest gyudon chain is now embarking on a research project to investigate what happens after three months of eating the dish.
Even if you’re not a fan of McDonald’s burgers, fries, or food offerings of any kind, you have to admit the fast food chain knows how to make a pretty tasty shake. Thick and creamy, sipping on a McDonald’s shake can instantly bring back those feelings of happy contentedness you felt as a child, and in Japan part of the reason might be that the experience is designed to make you feel like a baby sucking down a meal of breast milk.
Here at RocketNews, we’ve loved and lost time and time again. There have been black burgers, berry burgers, potato chip burgers and tomato bun burgers, and despite our treasured moments with them, they all eventually rode off into the sunset, leaving us with just a glimmer of hope that we might someday cross paths with them again.
Now one of our past loves is making its way into our hearts again: the Becker’s Deer Burger. Limited to just 15,000 sales from October 1, this is one re-encounter we’re looking forward to!
As a leading purveyor of fatty fast food, McDonald’s is certain to have its share of detractors. It seems every time we run a story about the golden arches, commenters are all too quick to point out how the fast food restaurant’s offerings tend to be on the less healthy side (to put it diplomatically).
But even among McDonald’s more ardent opponents are those who would admit that its fried apple pies were pretty darn good. It’s perhaps that crowd that a beleaguered McDonald’s Japan is trying to appeal to with their new anko bean paste pies.
One of the upsides to being a little kid is that you can get presents even on someone else’s birthday. But like getting your food pre-cut into bite-sized pieces and having older people carry you around when you’re tired, you can only expect to receive bags of party favors up to a certain age.
A rare exception to this, though, is the birthday of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Harland Sanders. To celebrate Sanders’ birthday, KFC Japan is offering all-you-can eat fried chicken, but the unlimited bird is just part of the chain’s generosity on that special day.
Here at RocketNews24, we’ll eat pretty much anything. But we especially love wrapping our smackers around limited edition burgers in a variety of hues and consistencies. We’ve eaten black burgers, red burgers, sloppy burgers, and crusty burgers, but what our little lives have been missing all this time is a pretty pink burger! Luckily KFC China has complied with our wishes and rolled out their brand-new rose flavoured chicken burger.
We sent our lucky reporter Meg all the way to China just to try one of these fancy and feminine chicken sammidges.
Subway is one of the most popular and successful fast food chains from the US to make it here in Japan. While of course you could always load your sub up with things like meatballs and cheese, the company has succeeded here by carving out a niche for itself as the healthy fast food option. Subway’s brand in Japan is now synonymous with fresh vegetables and lean meats, so what happens when a chain with a reputation for offering healthy, light lunches starts selling gooey, cheesy pizza?
These are not just any pizzas, though; they’re Pizza Subs, but not as Americans might know them.
Dear Taco Bell Japan,
I’m writing this open letter to first welcome you back to Japan, but also to warn you of a great danger that lies ahead.
When you first announced you would open in Shibuya I was among those who felt that warm feeling of an old friend returning. And even though there were a few hiccups with your grand opening such as the lack of beans and “supreme court tacos” on your online menu, I had faith Taco Bell would rise to greatness in Japan.
However, since then we haven’t really heard much from your restaurant, and that worries me. So, I’d like to present you with five ideas for uniquely Japanese tacos that will not only appeal to the local crowd, but be eye-catching enough to make your brand a name to remember. I even went ahead and actually made and taste-tested them for you!
A few days ago, we talked about fast food chain Mos Burger’s plan to unleash something called the Wet Burger, or Nure Burger in Japanese. Unlike normal sandwiches which are content to have their sauce on the inside, the Wet Burger is submerged in tomato sauce before serving.
But is this new challenger a legitimate rival to the standard Mos Burger, already considered one of the stars of the Japanese fast food scene? Or is it simply too bold and saucy for its own good?
While everyone has his or her own preference on what ingredients make for a great burger, we can all pretty much agree on the proper construction method, right? Bread on the top and bottom, meat, vegetables, and condiments in between has pretty much been the standard for as long as anyone can remember.
Japanese hamburger outfit Mos Burger has been shaking up the burger blueprint this summer, though. This month, the chain released a burger that replaces its bun with two thick slices of tomato, and next month Mos is set to launch something equally unusual: a burger covered entirely in sauce, even on the outside!
Japanese fast food chain Mos Burger has built a reputation over the years for its healthy burger options. For those with an aversion to traditional wheat-based buns, Mos Burger offers versions made with grilled rice patties. And if you’re counting calories, they’ll simply wrap your filling in lettuce.
Now there’s an even more impressive option for health-conscious customers: a burger stuffed between two halves of a giant tomato. Available after 2:00pm from only one outlet in Japan, we stopped by to check out the rare red burger, taking lots of delicious photos for you along the way!
It’s no secret that McDonald’s Japan has been on a slippery slope following several food safety scandals in recent years. In 2014, the fast food giant reported its first annual loss in 11 years, which amounted to 21.84 billion yen (around US$176 million).
In an effort to restore trust and reaffirm their commitment to quality assurance, the fast food chain recently fitted out two stores in Japan with an “open kitchen” design, allowing customers to get an inside view of operations to see just how orders are made, from start to finish.
But will this be enough to bring customers back to the golden arches?
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