“Burger”


燒肉珍珠堡 @ Mos Burger
Originally uploaded by yusheng.

This picture of a rice burger was posted by Yusheng, one of my Flickr contacts. This would have to be one of the weirdest culinary experiments I have seen, but given my Asian heritage I find myself wondering what it would taste like, and wishing it was available in Perth, Western Australia.

M can tell you that burgers and sandwiches are my least preferred type of food – although I will eat the occasional sandwich at work on days when I want to sit and read at my PC during lunchtime…

Language note: The caption Yusheng provided is the name of the “burger” in question. If you don’t have Chinese fonts enabled on your PC you may not be able to see the characters: 燒肉珍珠堡, shao rou zhen zhu bao which translate roughly as roast meat pearl burger. The “pearls” in question here refer to the rice – you often find pearls in Chinese food, usually referring to the grains. (There’s 珍珠奶茶 pearl milk tea, that quintessentially Taiwanese creation bubble tea, which I like on a hot summer’s day.) The å ¡ bao here is not the bao 包 bun we know and love, rather it is from the 汉堡包 han bao bao hamburger. Yes, in Chinese you don’t eat a hamburger, you eat a hanbao bao. Hanbao “Hamburg” + bao “bun”. I love Chinese 🙂

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8 Comments

mooiness 5 August 2005

A language lesson in a foodie post. Excellent. Btw, MOS burger is fab. You may not like McD burgers (who does?), you may prefer HJs, but until you’ve tried MOS – you ain’t tasted heaven on earth.

Ok I went a tad overboard there but it’s droooool. 😛

cherryripe 5 August 2005

Intriguing. But err… no, thank you. I, too, would choose burgers – bread or pearls – last. Heh.

cyn 5 August 2005

so i could be renamed to “pearlpot”! hahahahaha.

CW 6 August 2005

Mooiness, where would I get a MOS burger? In Taiwan? I can’t eat Macca’s, and don’t like HJs either. My junk food fixes tend to be of the chicken varieties, and pizza sometimes.

Cherry: M and I had a brief discussion about the rice burger – we wondered how on earth you would eat it. I was guessing that the “patties” might be made of sticky rice, but that would be quite messy. I think you’d have to use utensils, which kind of defeats the purpose of a burger, doesnt it?

Cyn: Zhenzhuguo to be exact 😛 Guo is closer to “pot”. Or else zhenzhutong “pearl bucket/keg/tub/barrel”. Ricepot is more catchy!

By the way could you all see the Chinese characters?

mooiness 6 August 2005

I could see the characters just fine. 🙂

And MOS burgers – I know they are available only in HK, Taiwan, Singapore and its homeland Japan. When I went to Japan my friend living there insisted we tried it, “It’s unlike any burgers that you’ve ever tasted.” 🙂

CW 7 August 2005

Glad you could see the characters, Mooiness. You can read Chinese, right?

As for the MOS burgers, I’ll make sure I check them out next time I am in Singapore (given that the likelihood of my going to Japan, Taiwan or HK is slim)…

mooiness 9 August 2005

yup – I can read. 🙂

Miss L 9 August 2005

I’m so pleased that hamburger in Chinese means something that’s come from Hamburg – undoing the English re-analysis! woohoo!