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The Best Burger in Japan?
日本で一番美味しいバーガーですか
A bar patron in Tokyo convinces me to eat a burger in a small onsen town 10-hours away by train.
"If you go there, you must have the burger."
I put down my drink and chuckled at the 40-some-year-old salaryman beside me. He was on a stretch of 14-hour workdays and decided to stop by for a drink at this bar just two blocks from Ikebukuro station before his one-and-a-half-hour train ride home. Despite his tired eyes and drooping posture, he was in the mood for conversation - or to grasp the chance to talk about something other than work for the next hour or two.
As I sat sitting through social media feeds on my cell phone, his first question to me was, "Where do you come from?" I politely told him, and he said a few words about Canada being a beautiful country. This was followed by the familiar, "What are you doing in Japan?"
I gave him the gist of my plan in Japan. After one night in Tokyo, I would fly out towards Nagasaki and slowly head back towards Sapporo. His eyes glimmered with excitement as I mentioned the stops I was making along the way. "First stop is Nagasaki, then a stop in Kagoshima, and a night at the hot springs in Yufuin -"
"Ah, Yufuin?" His smile widened. "Very beautiful city."
I wanted to tell him something other than that my knowledge of Yufuin was that it had one of the only ryokans with cheap private rooms with an open-air bath available to solo travellers. Instead, I tried to scrounge for whatever piece of info I had recalled seeing on hotel websites and travel blogs about the place. "Yeah, it's a beautiful city in the valleys, right? Lots of hot springs, right?"
The man nodded. "Yes, beautiful." He gave a small laugh. "But, if you go there, you must have the burger."
"The burger?" I ask.
He holds his hand out to mimic holding a giant burger about to fall apart. “Special Yufuin burger. You would like it!" he exclaims.
"What's so special about the burger?" I ask, my eyes gazing at how big he's advertising this burger with his hands.
"Very tasty! Famous burger of Yufuin, it is."
Thinking that a place must be known for more than its burger, especially in Japan, I ask him about anything else interesting to see; he shakes his head and continues to voice his praise for this valley burger in the middle of a hot-springs town. We continued to talk about other areas of Japan: what to do in Osaka, where to sightsee in Hokkaido and other routine local tourist questions, but no matter the attraction, he always brought it back to "the delicious burger in Yufuin!"
"Don't forget to go," he says as I pay my bill. I thanked him and headed back to my hotel for the night. The man had mentioned something about some brewery tour in Sapporo, and he had mentioned something about a geisha ceremony held in Kyoto for tourists. He mentioned some websites and phone numbers to contact to ensure I get a spot at these events. Naturally, I had forgotten all that, and instead, the first thing I searched for when I got back to my hotel room was: "yufuin burger."
It was disappointing, or at least not helpful, that the only thing I could gather about it was that it was sold at a place called "Yufuin Burger" (how convenient), it was midway between the train station and the ryokan I would be staying at, and that it had a 4-star rating on Yelp. In fact, it had only one review by a Chinese tourist who, in one English word, wrote, "good." note 1
Regardless of what Yelp had said, I made up my mind to go and visit this place in person. It was now an honour to appease this salaryman's wishes and try this "famous" burger of Yufuin.
The fact that this place only had one review on Yelp initially made me question its notoriety. However, if anyone had told me there was a burger place to try in Japan, chances are I would have changed my plans to try it out. For starters, I take recommendations seriously. Why would anyone recommend something terrible for others to try? Second, I am a burgerphile, so at least I could check "trying a burger" off the list of countries that I ate a burger at.
Three days later and a 15-minute walk from the ryokan I was staying at, I found nestled among the commercial area of Yufuin a wooden sign hanging from the rafters with a painted image of a burger and the words "Yufuin Burger." The village of Yufuin, probably because it's nestled between several mountains, appeared like a small town in the North American Rocky Mountains, minus the traffic and the drunks. It had the North American charm of coffee shops and souvenir stores with European-alpine motifs scattered down the main thoroughfare, with the Japanese aesthetic of streetside food kiosks and ryokan guests in yukatas meandering down the streets. One of the food kiosks even mentioned having won "the best croquettes in Japan, "which made the salaryman's claim of the town having a famous burger even more likely note 2.
The Yufuin Burger store only had two other customers, a Japanese couple sharing the boldly-claimed famous burger. It must have been delicious because as they were about to leave, the girl asked her partner for another burger for their train ride home. The simple menu consisted of three burgers: teriyaki, "Yufuin," and bacon/egg note 3. I studied the namesake "Yufuin" burger intently: in addition to the usual burger toppings of lettuce, tomatoes, and onions, the Yufuin burger also had cream cheese and a tomato-sauce base (instead of the usual mayo and ketchup).
I went up to the counter, pointed at the Yufuin burger, and explained to her that "a man in Tokyo had told me that these burgers were famous and I should try them out."
She looked surprised, "eh~?"
"Are they not famous?" I asked.
She laughed. "There's so much food in Tokyo. It's good to hear someone from Tokyo speaks so highly of our burgers!"
"Could I try the Yufuin burger? Is that a good one?" I ask.
"Excellent choice," she replies. The burger itself isn't the cheapest: it came in at around 900¥, but the cashier said she would throw in some fried potatoes as appreciation for having come on the advice of someone from Tokyo.
It's only a short time before the meal is ready, maybe 5 minutes, especially since I'm the only one in the restaurant. I found out later that the restaurant was actually closing, and I conveniently came in at the time of the last call. I sit near the counter and analyze the burger to see why a man 1000km away would recommend this place. Nothing notably different and definitely not the nicest-looking burger I'd ever seen. Then, I take my first bite.
Deliciousness.
The Yufuin burger had the perfect combination of cream cheese, tomato sauce, and lettuce that brought out the caramelized taste of the burger patty. It wasn't just a meat patty slapped between two slices of bread but a synergistic delight between meat, vegetables, and cheese. And it worked, at least if you discounted the fact that the burger was a bit on the small side - there definitely was more sauce than needed for a burger that size.
Halfway through consuming the burger, the cashier comes by. "So, is the burger good?"
"It's very delicious," I say back. "Thank you very much."
"Ah, you're welcome," she says.
Before she goes, I ask, "Is there any place like this around here?"
She nods and points to a place across the street. "You can get burgers anywhere now - "She trails off.
"Are they the same kind of burger?" I ask.
"Well, it's a different place, so they do things differently," she replies.
"I do like the ones here," I say.
"Thank you," she says. "I don't usually eat burgers, but I do like the ones here too!"
And then it hit me. When I started the trip, I had chosen to make an informal "Japan Food Trip" and eat Japanese food until the day I left Narita airport. However, that day, I had inadvertently broken that rule. Here I was, eating the most un-Japanese thing around and enjoying it. It's not that it was a non-Japanese meal that made it enjoyable, nor was it that they had done something extraordinarily unique to make the burger top-notch. Instead, here I was having something that goes beyond the cultural food norm of Japan; if I had mentioned that I had a burger in Japan, a Westerner would probably think, "So what? ".
Think of it another way: suppose I was from Shanghai, and I went to Europe to a restaurant that a local said had the best Shanghai cuisine in town. No matter how good the food was, an expected reaction would probably be, "You went to Europe to eat Shanghainese food?" But that's because of our relative experience in having it probably more regularly - why go travelling to try something you have regularly?
The answer, at least for me, is this: travelling is not solely about myself but about how interconnected I am with the world around me. I don't travel to see how the world can fit into the needs I map out on a travel itinerary or schedule; I travel to see how I fit in the world. It's not about the "pursuit of fleeting novelty" or to "pad one's experiential resume" note 4 but about strengthening our understanding of experiences. Yeah, I had the Yufuin burger today, but it wasn't about "checking off" eating a burger in Japan; it was about the 'why': why had a man in Tokyo suggested at a burger place 1000 kilometres away?
While the answer seems squarely in line with the answer, "burgers are not consumed a lot in Japanese culture, so a unique burger will hold more credence to a Japanese person," it also says a lot about the experiences of what it means to make a recommendation. In retrospect, it would be selfish to presume or expect a recommendation to be made because someone knew who I was or thought they knew what I'd like. A recommendation is what one person sees of the world around them and their excitement to share it with someone else. Maybe it's not about "checking off" that I had a burger in Japan but instead sharing someone else's excitement. And there are no regrets about that.
As I leave, the cashier bows, saying, "Thank you, and please come back."
"Most definitely," I say back.
Author: Francisco Tenorio
Last Updated: 2024/03/1
Notes:
I didn't check non-English review sites at the time, but I'd assume there probably was more at Japanese review sites.
[Return to Text]The place, Yufuin Kinsho Croquettes, had advertised itself as having won the gold award for croquettes. Having a hot croquette on a cold day in Yufuin is delicious.
[Return to Text]Egg on a burger is actually quite common in Japan. When I was in Japan, McDonald's had the "Tamago Double Mac" on their menu - a hybrid of an Egg McMuffin and a Double Big Mac. Deliciousness, indeed.
[Return to Text]These phrases (and the general concept of the passage following) are part of Rebecca Bean's New Yorker article on "Kicking the Bucket List" (Sept 2014). It is undoubtedly one of my favourite articles on the problems of a "bucket list," a concept which, in today's parlay, has become, as Bean describes it, a "YOLO-ization of cultural experience."
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