MOS Burger: Yoshoku or Nah?

Here in Singapore, with hawker food so cheap, the inclination to eat fast food simply does not exist. Why get a Popeyes chicken sandwich – as good as they are – when you could get a bowl of noodles that’s cheaper, better for you, and more delicious? And I’ve seen quite a variety of chains here. There are your typical American options – McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Popeyes, Wingstop, etc – recently I’ve been the recipient of advertisements hawking Domino’s volcano pizza.

I mean, look at this monstrosity. Setting aside the abominable idea – I do not enjoy that neon orange cheese facsimile – this is just poor design. Unless that cheese is piping hot, it will become a congealed hockey puck of fake cheese in the middle of your sad excuse for a pizza. As far as I can tell, this is only available at Dominos in Asia, but it’s kinda ironic because this almost seems like a satire of American fast food.

Some spots of American origin that are extinct or nearly extinct in the land of their origin are thriving here: I’ve seen Long John Silver’s and Swensen’s. Long John Silver’s has nearly been eradicated stateside, and I think Swensen’s hasn’t had a presence on the continent in this century. There are also a few Australian chains, not that I can recognize them all. There’s an Australian Mexican chain called Guzman y Gomez that I have not patronized, but I have subjected them to much ire simply because I don’t think Australians are to be trusted when it comes to Mexican food.

Seeing as I am in Asia, there are Asian chains as well. There’s Jollibee, a Filipino fried chicken chain that recently opened in the DC area (I think it’s out in Wheaton) that I have yet to try. But there’s one Asian fast food chain that I have some history with: MOS Burger.

Back in 1960s, a Japanese man named Atsushi Sakurada was working at an investment company in Los Angeles, and frequented the local chili burger chain Original Tommy’s. He observed the cook-to-order assembly-line concept, and decided to bring it back to Japan. Thus, MOS Burger was born. True to its inspiration, the eponymous MOS Burger features a Sloppy Joe-esque meat sauce. Much of the menu features typical fast-food burger fare with a Japanese twist.

I would argue that this is a form of yoshoku, a concept that I learned about in the Japanese food class I am taking this semester. Yoshoku literally means ‘Western food,’ and it emerged at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration when Japan ended its 250+ year period of isolation and embraced Western ideas as a means of modernizing. This included cuisine: for centuries, Japan had not eaten meat in accordance with contemporary Buddhist principles. Out of this transformation emerged yoshoku: a fusion of Japanese and Western food, including dishes like curry rice, tonkatsu, and omurice. If curry rice – a Japanese take on the British interpretation of Indian curry – is yoshoku, then why isn’t a burger with curry on it yoshoku as well? Further adding to the yoshoku-ness is the presence of the MOS rice burger: a burger with buns made of rice.

After seeing Dune 2 – five stars from me by the way – I decided to stop by MOS Burger and see what they were up to. To start, I ordered a menchikatsu rice burger and a croquette. Menchikatsu is a breaded and deep-fried meet patty. This was more like a classic Japanese hambagu – a thick burger patty cooked in a sweet and savory sauce (I think it’s supposed to be a Japanese interpretation of Salisbury steak, a WASP dish utterly unfamiliar to me). The patty was thick, with some crispy crust around it, a curry sauce, and sliced radish on a rice bun.

It was pretty good, but a little difficult to eat. The rice bun tends to soak up the sauce and fall apart. I think they would benefit from a little time on the grill to crisp up – like yakionigiri. The curry sauce was satisfying, if a little salty.

The croquette – korokke in Japanese – is a yoshoku dish that made its way to Japan via France. It’s like a fried mashed potato patty, and the MOS Burger version is like Japan’s answer to the McDonalds hashbrown. It was nice and crispy, if not mind-blowing. But I was still a little hungry, so I decided to do some more research.

I tried their tsukune burger – a MOS Burger staple upon which the rice buns first debuted back in 1987. For the uninitiated, tsukune is a chicken meatball, usually served at yakitori doused in tare sauce. This was a little disappointing, as it was bland and I was expecting more flavor from the sauce.

For dessert, I got something called an ichigo surprise. Outside of knowing that ichigo was strawberry, I didn’t know what to expect. This was actually pretty good: a strawberry filled with white chocolate and frozen. This would be easy to recreate at home, but with some better chocolate.

So yeah, that’s my review of MOS Burger: a fun Japanese take on typical fast food fare. Not transcendent, but I didn’t expect it to be. The menu – like Japanese cosine – is very seasonal, and always rotating with new Japanese twists on burger and sandwiches. They’ve started to expand to Australia, so who knows? Maybe America is next. I could see it doing well in New York.