Burger King Garlic Meat Beast and Garlic Double Cheese (product information)

"Garlic Meat Beast" sounds like a good name for a lot of things. It would be a great name for a rock band. It certainly would make a nice euphemism for a part of the male anatomy, especially if its owner is an aficionado of garlic. Incidentally, the Japanese does not say "beast", but says "garlic meat monster". That would be an even better name for a rock band.

These burgers became available on July 26, these became available, though for some reason they are not being sold at the Burger King near where I used to live (Shin-Koenji). I guess that meat monsters simply are not welcome there.

The word "stamina" in Japan is a code word for "high in calories and fat" and it is applied to the meat monster pictured at the top. As you can see, it has three kinds of meat as well as garlic chips, though one is a grilled piece of chicken so that shouldn't lend too much of a load to the calorie total. Unfortunately, I could not get stats on this as it was't included in the nutrition information on Burger King's site. I'd wager, however, that it'd be best to skip dinner if you have the beast for lunch.

McDonald's Precious Quarter Pounders (product information)

McDonald's launched a campaign in which they are offering burgers named after precious gems and metals throughout July. It started with the "gold ring", a burger featuring a ring of pineapple, bacon, Monterey Jack cheese, and barbecue sauce with 10 spices on a kaiser roll. The more recent release was the "black diamond" which features egg yolk, black truffle sauce, Swiss cheese, and grilled onions and mushrooms on brioche-like bread. On July 20, they'll offer the "ruby spark". This one will feature pepper jack cheese, spicy avocado sauce/spread, jalepeno, and chorizo.

While McDonald's doesn't mention why they've decided to release three designer burgers for a week each, my guess is this is to draw attention to their quarter pounder in general, which was recently reissued in Japan as part of their summer fare.

One interesting thing is the FAQ for these burgers. It has questions that reveal something about Japanese food culture and the lack of sophisticated understanding of various types of cheese. In a country that is largely catered to with plastic-wrapped slices of processed cheese, this is no shocker. One of the question is essentially saying, "why are there holes in my cheese?" The answer is that it is Emmental (Swiss) and that is natural. Another is about how the holes are big in their cheese and the consumer is concerned that they're not getting their fair share. The folks at McDonald's mention that the cheese is portioned by weight, so it doesn't matter how big the holes are.

Personally, I think a better answer to the question of why there are holes in the cheese would be that Ronald got confused with his hole punch and just went a little crazy one day. :-)

Random Picture #74

My husband and I sometimes enjoy just picking a station which has little fame associated with it and just wander around the area to see what pops up of interest. Sometimes, we find something delightful and, at others, we find that the lack of a reputation is well-deserved. One of the places we went to was Tachikawa, a relatively big place with relatively little to recommend itself to us personally. It was mainly populated by various soft gambling establishments (pachinko and slots). It did have this burger joint, which had a name which caught my fancy. It's not especially strange, except for the fact that it implies there is only one burger and you have finally located it.