Sweet potato burgers appear in Japan, but do they create spud synergy?【Taste test】

Once again, Dom Dom thinks outside the box when choosing what’s inside their burgers.

Imagine you’re making a burger. Think of all the standard toppings you might add, things like tomato, lettuce, and onion. Then imagine, instead of those, sliding a slab of potato in there. Seems weird, doesn’t it?

But really, should it? After all, what’s a more natural pairing for a burger than a side of French fries, which are slices of, yep, potato. And now imagine sweetening this deal’s spuds by using not just a slice of potato, but a slice of sweet potato, as a burger topping.

Honestly, we felt like this concept could go either way in terms of being delicious or a disaster, but we knew that it had to go in our stomach, which is why we headed to Dom Dom Hamburger to try their new Osatsu (Sweet Potato) Salmon Burger.

Dom Dom is one of Japan’s smaller burger chains, but they’ve always got big ideas, whether it’s a burger with a whole deep-fried crab in it or one where the patty is replaced by a thick Japanese-style omelet and spicy cod roe. The timing of the Osatsu Salmon Burger’s release coincides with the tastiest season for both sweet potatoes and salmon, so while it’s an unusual concept, this is definitely the right season to try it.

After placing our order, we had about a five-minute wait for our food. When we unwrapped it, we were greeted by a shocking sight…

…as the salmon filet is massive, sticking out way past the edges of the bun!

This is something we’ve seen from Dom Dom before, like with their Red Wing Burger. In the case of the Osatsu Salmon Burger, though, Dom Dom hasn’t been crowing about its size, and with the angle of the promotional photo not showing the whole sandwich, we were very surprised, in a good way, to see how big it is.

On top of the fillet is shredded cabbage with tartar sauce, and below it is the slice of fried sweet potato.

This is actually a different construction from what was shown in the promotional photo, where the sweet potato was above the salmon filet, but one advantage to being the only place around that puts sweet potato in your burgers is that no one can definitively say that you put it in the wrong place.

We sliced the sandwich in half to examine its cross section, which is when another ingredient made its presence known, as there’s cheese too inside the breading of the salmon filet.

OK, let’s find out if Dom Dom can convince us that sweet potato has a place inside a burger, and…

…yep, they sure did! Unusual as the concept may be, the flavor here has a straightforward, easy-to-love deliciousness that makes for a great eating experience. A lot of that is probably thanks to sweet potato itself not having any sharp, divisive elements to its flavor profile, so that it adds a pleasantly sweet and starchy quality to the burger without interfering with or covering up any of the sandwich’s other charms.

Lending further weight to that theory is that when we tried a bite of the sweet potato by itself, it was nice and tasty, and with no unusual seasonings or other unnecessary embellishments. Sweet potato may be the marquee ingredient in the Osatsu Salmon Burger, but it’s a team player that Dom Dom lets play to its natural strengths.

It’s not only the flavor that makes the Osatsu Salmon Burger great, though, but the texture too…or actually the textures. Between the crispness of the cabbage, the crunch of the deep-fried salmon fillet, and the fluffiness of the sweet potato, there’s a lot of complexity to the mouthfeel here, and we loved all of it.

With sweet potatoes being a seasonal food, the Osatsu Salmon Burger is likewise going to be available for a limited time only, but as of October 25 it’s on sale at all Dom Dom Hamburger branches. And if you’re hungry for more burgers that make of seasonal Japanese ingredients, Burger King Japan’s new Kyoto Whopper, made with freshly harvested rice, is out there now too.

Related: Dom Dom Hamburger location list
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