Japanese burger chain releases epic tofu burgers, designed by customers

A dream burger with a Japanese flavour, devised by over 110,000 customers.

For many burger lovers in Japan, Freshness Burger is where it’s at. As one of the first chains to offer soy patties in Japan, fans will tell you this homegrown chain has been ahead of the competition for a long time, and now they’re blowing the competition right out of the water with a new burger to celebrate their 30th birthday.

▼ Who needs a birthday cake when you’ve got the Atsuage Tofu Japanese Burger?

The new burger comes with a choice of two sauces — spicy Mentaiko (pollack roe) Mayo (pictured left, above) or Kurozu-an (black vinegar), which has a sweet and sour flavour (pictured right, above).

According to the chain, this is an unprecedented new product, both in terms of ingredients and the way in which it was devised, as the burger was born from the opinions of fans — 113,453 of them, to be exact — who chose their ideal ingredients via a poll on Twitter that began in December last year.

Fans chose their favourite ingredients (listed in the image below), covering buns, vegetables, the main ingredient, sauce, and the patty.

Some of the choices included sesame buns, pumpkin buns or low-carb buns, vegetables like wasabi, okra or Japanese daikon (white radish), and tofu, regular, or classic patties, miso sauce, soy sauce or plum sauce, and burdock root, tuna or Japanese rolled omelette for the main ingredient.

However, after consulting the results of the poll, it appeared that the public were keen to get a taste of two types of burgers — one with atsuage (thick fried) tofu as the main ingredient, and the other with lotus root as the main ingredient.

There could only be one winning burger for this occasion, however, so the chain arranged for eight lucky fans to come in, try them both and make the final call on the winner.

▼ The Lotus Root Burger that almost made it to the menu.

Following the taste test, it was decided that the 30th anniversary burger would contain atsuage tofu as the main ingredient, with tasters making comments like:

“It feels like a healthy choice.”
“You can eat it without feeling guilty.”
“The deep-fried tofu has a great mouthfeel.”
“The impact is amazing!”

▼ Judging by the looks of things, we have to agree with that last comment.

The thick-fried tofu really is the star of the show here, and it’s joined by soy sauce and shiso (perilla leaves) to give it even more of a Japanese flavour.

It’s like eating a Japanese meal in burger form, and we can’t wait to try it when it’s released for a limited time from 26 April to 30 May, priced at 650 yen (US$4.86) each.

Source, images: PR Times
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