Big Man's burgers are turning Japanese
TOKYO: It is a few minutes before 10 am, and the shopping mall is still empty, yet the crew at Big Man is already at battle stations. The grill has been greased, the bacon sliced and the first load of eggs fried and just in time too. When the doors to the food court fly open, a swarm of diners makes a beeline for the counter and the delicacies beyond.
Such was the scene one day at Tokyo Panya Street, a bread-themed food park recently opened at LaLaport shopping mall in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture.
Elite bakeries from all over Japan have been brought together to create Tokyo Panya Street: One business from Kyoto specializes in curry-filled buns; another from Hokkaido offers melon-flavored ones; but the undisputed star attraction is Big Man, hailing from the naval base town of Sasebo in Nagasaki Prefecture, Kyushu. It isn't actually a bakery at all.
It's a hamburger shop, although not exactly the fast-food type. Since it opened in February, its customers have sometimes had to wait for as long as three hours to get served. And wait they have, because Big Man doesn't serve regular hamburgers. It serves Sasebo burgers, and that makes all the difference.
"I had an idea we might be a hit," says Yutaka Ogura, the head honcho at Big Man, as he wipes sweat from his brow, tongs still clutched in hand. "But I didn't think we'd be this big a hit. The line goes around the court until closing time."
A hamburger is just a hamburger, says Ogura, but to bite into a Sasebo burger is to bite into a unique piece of Japanese culinary history.
Sasebo and the shipyards there were practically destroyed during World War II. At the start of the Korean War, the US Navy moved in, bringing not only big ships and big equipment, but also American-style food to the town. There are, according to the Sasebo tourist commission, some 20 ma-and-pa hamburger restaurants in town.
"We don't consider the hamburger a foreign food," explains Mihoko Oniyama of the tourist commission. "For us it's our traditional regional dish."
Ogura serves up a regulation Sasebo burger, featuring a patty of Japanese beef, a fried egg, cherry wood-cured bacon a la Canadienne and lettuce, onion and tomato everything locally produced.
The Asahi Shimbun
(China Daily 04/12/2007 page19)
