Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Anger Management

Food With Thoughts.

How does one manage anger in a country so polite it makes Canada look like a nation of drunk Serbian nationalists? Well they use an international fast food chain to bring you “The Angry Whopper” from Bah-gah-kingu. That’s right BK has looked up “spicy” in the dictionary and has apparently found the word “angry” next to it.

So without further anything, here is the Angry Otaku’s look into an edible source of anger. Or is it that the burger is angry and not causing anger…? Oh right, who cares.



So there is the campaign going on. Burger King locations in Japan are apparently comfortable serving food that is emotional unstable! According to this official document on display down in the depths Shinjuku’s Keio Mall (between the JR and Toei entrances) there are some 3 different levels of angriness that you can request. As you can see, the direct translation of the levels on this sign are “meh” “watch-yo self” and “ZOMGWFT you be crayzay!"), no really that’s totally what it says, now go watch a fan-sub because you know all the Japanese you’ll ever need.

Back to the story here, being the adventurous type and loving spicy food in general, I asked for the strongest level.

As this BK didn’t have a dining area, I had no choice but to get it to go. In Japanese, “to go” is said “ore no oshiri o mitte” You should totally go say that to every Japanese person who works at a fast food place… actually just start saying it all the time that way you’ll never forget.

With a level of Japanese efficiency that makes you curse the day you have to return to the U.S., and deal with the products of a broken education system, the smartly uniformed staff had my order ready in under 3 minutes. Had I not been the only customer, they still would have had it ready that fast because I’m important dammit! Now, for an angry piece of BK broiled kick-ass, it was surprising to receive it in an unassuming BK brown paper bag, designed for the snively likes of chicken nuggets or gender-confused teriyaki burgers or any other emotion+menu item. This is an ANGRY WHOPPER and it could tear that helpless paper asunder with it’s anger-ray sesame seed eyes and tomatoes of fury! However I was assured that no chains or Kevlar were necessary as the Angry Whopper is kept in perfect hibernation until the inner wrapper is removed. Ah-so.



So let’s see what’s under there.


It did look pristine for fast food at first glance, with just one sauced up jalapeño falling out, indicating a massive amount stuffed inside. So far so good, and the sauce had that distinct smell of being spiced up deliberately with B-grade pickled chilies (hey it’s BK, not casa de awesome), all accompanied with plenty of onion. To confirm this, there needed to be some checking under the hood.

Immediately the “double tomato” or in Japanese the “futatsu no oppai” (remember to ask for this loudly if you like tomatoes, or just ad “ja-nai” if you don’t) was something that struck tones of some high quality burger-ness to follow, but alas here is where our problems start. They were so thick and slippery that they immediately started causing a loss of structural cohesion between themselves and the lettuice/onions layer. They had to go if this thing was going to still resemble a Whopper, Angry or Otherwise. Normally this isn’t an issue on the regular Whopper, but the extra peppers down there were adding to the slippery plant matter pile. There was also a mayo-like sauce on it which caused concern that it would dampen the awesome hot-ness.


After getting through about half I realized that someone here was angry, but it was most definitely me not the Angry Whopper. The spice level would be what many of my friends call “ooowwww that’s WAY too hot!” which is what I call, “getting there.” But with a little augmentation from some smuggled in Mexican awesome juice, we were back on the true angry trail.



I want to get another one of these. Although angry, it far surpasses anything McDonald's has been able to come up with, with the “Big Texas Burger” being the only thing that comes close. Wendy’s sadly is no more, and MossBurger isn’t what it used to be and has nothing new that isn't topped with a fried egg, while the Freshness Burger chain thinks it’s ok to use frozen ready to cook patties that look like they came from Topps and charge 3 times as much as everyone else. No dear readers, if you are in Japan and find yourself hungry, then the next step should be to find yourself “angry” (unless you’re a vegetarian in which case …this might not be the country for you ...ya pansy).