Japanese Snack Review: Every Burger
Over the holidays I took my annual pilgrimage to the Mitsuwa marketplace in Edgewater, New Jersey. Now, I don’t want to hear from you West Coasters, taunting me about how you live right near one of these or some other equally large Japanese market. For me this is a big deal.
The biggest snacking news there was that one of the stands had black sesame soft ice cream. While you can now get a few ice cream products in that flavor that are made in this country - I’ve got one in my freezer that I’ll review for you as soon as I forget the soft ice cream, because the comparison wouldn’t be fair - I’ve only had it in soft ice cream in Japan. And somehow it’s just so much better that way than in any other ice cream type. So delicious that I did not know whether to jump up and down, or cry; I seriously considered moving to New Jersey instead of both of those, but unfortunately that is not a realistic option.
As for things I could buy and take home in a bag rather than my stomach, the market disappointed me by a lack of Crunky, and I remembered my vow not to buy any other Japanese chocolate snacks. But these Every Burger things - OK, there is some chocolate in them, but that is clearly not the point. The point is that they look like little tiny hamburgers.
Here, you can see their tininess, the little sesame-seed bun cookie, the little bit of cheese-colored substance on the chocolate burger: if you’re looking for a cookie that looks like a tiny hamburger, you couldn’t do better:
With that level of cuteness, as far as I am concerned, the taste is beside the point, but anyway: The chocolate is soft, and surprisingly decent. The cookies are a nice crunchy but not hard texture. The first few chews it just tastes like a plain cookie with chocolate filling, but gradually, disorientingly, your mouth is filled with the taste of sesame and is left with an aftertaste of sesame.
Sesame and chocolate is not a combination Americans are accustomed to. Now, there are many Japanese flavors that Americans are not accustomed to that in my opinion are to die for, like green tea, and the aforementioned black sesame. This… not so much.
The other weird thing is that I can’t quite locate where the flavor is coming from. There is sesame butter in the ingredient list, but is it in the cookie, or what? I took it apart and ate all the parts separately - seriously, Internet, do you appreciate the things I do for you? - but this didn’t help. My mouth was already full of the sesame aftertaste and I just couldn’t pin it down. Then after a while I got kind of desensitized to the sesame flavor which didn’t help either. It will have to remain a mystery.
But, the heck with it. The point of these is to look like little hamburgers. They don’t taste bad, and by God, they sure look like little hamburgers. That’s good enough for me.
7 Comments
Linda on January 10th, 2009
Ah, thanks, now I can see that - well, ’sesame (incomprehensible kanji) biscuit,’ at least. They also seem to admit that ‘cute’ is a big part of the point.
Shoulda included this I guess:
http://www.bourbon.co.jp/catalog/item?category=41&item=270
Rachel on January 10th, 2009
I’ve heard about these but I’ve never been able to find them. 
I don’t know what it is about Japanese snacks that make them such a risk for impulse buying.
I went to a Japanese supermarket yesterday to buy “proper” food but THESE (http://www.bourbon.co.jp/catalog/item?category=41&item=215) things managed to make their way in to my basket. Mostly because my thought process was “OMG MELON PAN COOKIE, IT’S BREAD AS A COOKIE”. 
Linda on January 10th, 2009
Choco melon pan cookie? Wow. I’m not sure it’s a GOOD idea, but it would require superhuman powers to resist it.
mandy_Reeves on January 12th, 2009
Ok….I have been begging my husband to take me to this place FOR EVER! We live in NJ and I think from me its only about 45 min to an hour’s drive.
I am definitley going now
Linda on January 12th, 2009
It is totally worth a trip - although caution, if you are really into the black sesame soft ice cream, there might have been a sign that said it was only available on weekends. I was too delirious with anticipation to remember clearly, though.
Dillon on January 17th, 2010
You can find them at Hastings, a book store that’s kinda popular. I think they’re okaaay, but I don’t know about anyone else.
Orchid64 on January 10th, 2009
The Bourbon web site says that the burgers “have spicy sesame-flavored biscuits with milk chocolate,” so I guess that the cookie part has the sesame.