Yes, Even The Cheese Is Black

I finally tried Burger King Japan’s most recent all-black, all-the-time burger offering, and OMG please don’t look now, but I wolfed it down in record time. It looks pretty weird (especially the BLACK CHEESE) but the taste was I-think-I’d-better-have-another-in-the-interest-of-science good.

“Shalyapin Sauce”? Apparently it’s named after a Russian opera singer who had a toothache when he toured Japan, so a Japanese chef devised an extra-tender steak smothered in onion-mirin sauce. This is the, uh, low-rent dark side version of that.

Bun, cheese and sauce are all flavored with bamboo charcoal and squid ink – two things I’d normally avoid like the plague – but like the sinister orange powder in Cheetos and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, somehow they make this weird-looking food utterly addictive. At first I couldn’t figure out what mystery ingredient was giving the meat an extra kick, but it turns out to be laced with lots of black pepper, which I secretly love.

You can go all-black purist or have it with the works.

Jonelle Patrick is the author of the Only In Tokyo mystery series, published by Penguin/Intermix.