Name: Every Burger
Origin: Japan
Found at: Freshia Market, Tustin
Cost: $1.99
Ingredients:
Wheat Flour, Sugar, Cacao Mass, Milk Powder, Palm Oil, Shortening, Margarine, Lactose, Cocoa Butter, Sesame Seed, Butter, Condensed Milk Powder, Egg, Corn Starch, Poppy Seed, Maltose, Wheat Meal, Glucose, Egg White, Salt, Calcinated Calcium, Leavening, Emulsifier (Soy), Artificial Flavor, Color (Annatto, Carotene).
Why I Bought It:
Well, look at it! Wouldn't you be curious what an Every Burger was? And since it was in the aisle where all the candies were, one can safely assume that it contains chocolate — a fact confirmed by a quick glance at the ingredients list.
Another glance reveals not just one kind of powdered milk, but two. Plain old “Milk Powder” and “Condensed Milk Powder”. I only point this out in case anyone is nervous about the China melamine-in-milk scandal and also, how there is such a thing as “condensed milk powder”. That last part seems kind of redundant, somehow. In any case, any hesitation I had about the presence of powdered milk was mitigated somewhat by the fact that these are Japanese snacks, not Chinese.
Tasting Notes:
In a word: awesome. They actually look like burgers, but the size of your fingernail! They've got every detail captured, down to the sesame seed bun. The chocolate represents the beef patty. White chocolate, the cheese. And the “bun” is actually a cookie.
Apart from being hilarious and tasty, these buggers might also function well to teach tots that one junk food can look like another junk food, and that the Japanese are industrious and creative people with crazy ideas.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.