Family Mart’s tsukimi burger threatens to drown you in cheese

Well, if I had to drown in something…

It’s autumn again in Japan, calendar-wise at least, not so much weather-wise. And this is when Japan celebrates the harvest moon, or as they call it, “moon-viewing (tsukimi) season,” by putting egg on hamburgers and other foods. These burgers are known as “tsukimi burgers,” and the yellow of the yolk represents the moon, which is said to glow especially bright during this time.

Tsukimi burgers were invented by McDonald’s in the ’90s, mainly because eggs were cheapest in the autumn and moon-watching was a good way to market burgers topped with egg. They eventually caught on like wildfire, though, and nowadays, nearly every restaurant has a tsukimi burger or other tsukimi menu item.

Now, it has even reached the convenience store sphere, with Family Mart debuting their lineup of 10 Tsukimi Sinful Meals. In addition to various rice bowls and pasta dishes, there is also the Drown in Cheese! Tsukimi Cheeseburger for 430 yen (US$2.92).

Depending on your feelings about cheese, that name could sound like a threat or a dream come true, but it was intriguing enough for our writer Daiki Nishimoto to try one out.

After buying a Drown in Cheese! Tsukimi Cheeseburger, Daiki took it home and microwaved it for one minute and 15 seconds at 500 watts as instructed on the package. The package is designed so you can just tear it open and eat the burger straight from the wrapper, but Daiki wanted a full visual inspection, so he put it on a plate.

There certainly was a lot of cheese on it, much of which leaked out and coated the bun with a yellow sheen. The burger must have realized that in order to drown others in cheese, it must first drown itself in cheese.

After Daiki bisected it with a knife to see its composition of toppings, he went in for the first bite. He was excited to find that same shift in textures from the fluffiness of the bun to the smoothness of the egg, before a burst of cheese flavor hit his taste buds.

He wouldn’t go as far as saying he was “drowning” in cheese, but this was without a doubt cheesier than your average tsukimi burger. The addition of onion gave it a nice little zing that separated it from other tsukimi burgers as well.

Daiki was most impressed by how well the various textures held up, even though this burger was refrigerated whole and then microwaved whole. It had just the mixture of consistencies you’d expect from such a sandwich, and also possessed unique aspects that made it much more than a tsukimi burger you might only buy out of desperation at a convenience store.

The only flaw in the Drown in Cheese! Tsukimi Cheeseburger was the price. McDonald’s cheapest tsukimi burger sells for roughly the same price at 440 yen. Since Family Mart was a virtual unknown in the tsukimi battlefield, they would do better to try and beat the very inventor of the sandwich in terms of price at least.

Luckily, Daiki felt the Drown in Cheese! Tsukimi Cheeseburger really was a worthy competitor to those sold by major fast food chains. It was a daring move by a convenience store and begs the question of what unlikely businesses will join the tsukimi race next year.

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