{"id":1639,"date":"2014-10-17T16:43:53","date_gmt":"2014-10-17T06:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcolmgroves.com\/blog\/?p=1639"},"modified":"2014-10-17T16:43:53","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T06:43:53","slug":"the-dreaded-black-burger-of-tokyo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcolmgroves.com\/blog\/?p=1639","title":{"rendered":"The Dreaded Black Burger of Tokyo"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m pretty strict about keeping this blog developer-related, so please forgive me this one off-topic post.<\/p>\n

I’ve been in Tokyo this week for work, and on Monday I was walking passed a McDonald’s in Ochanomizu<\/a> when I was struck by the following poster out the front.<\/p>\n

\"Why,<\/a><\/p>\n

My first reaction was one of amazement. Amazement that McDonald’s had managed to make itself even less appealing to me than it already was.<\/p>\n

The longer I looked at it, the more I was puzzled: What were those things that look like raw egg yolks at the top? What was the sauce that looked like an oil spill at the bottom? What had they done to the bread to make it look like it\u00a0had been left, forgotten for a month, at the back of a student’s fridge?<\/p>\n

But the biggest question I had was: Why would McDonald’s, a successful, seemingly smart company, purposely make such an unappetising looking burger?<\/p>\n

So I snapped a photo, posted it to Facebook with a smart-arse comment, and kept on walking with that special\u00a0feeling of renewed self-worth that only comes from Likes and Retweets.<\/p>\n

Over the next few days however, these questions kept nagging at me. I increasingly needed to know if this thing tasted as bad as it looked. It was a Halloween special that would very likely not be available next time I was here, so by the second-last day of my trip I’d decided I had to taste one.<\/p>\n

\"Burger<\/p>\n

By this stage I’d roped one of my colleagues who was visiting from the US, Brad Moore<\/a>, into joining me on this little quest, so this afternoon after our last meeting, we headed off to McDonalds. Fujii-san<\/a> and Iga-san<\/a> decided to join us, in Iga-san’s case I think mostly\u00a0to see if we were really stupid enough to eat it, but by the time we got there we’d convinced\u00a0him\u00a0to have one as well.<\/p>\n

Like most fast food, the real thing looked even worse than the picture in the ad, which in this case seemed impossible.<\/p>\n

\"Yikes,<\/a><\/p>\n

I did however get the answers to some of my questions:<\/p>\n