The Unvegan

Sometimes the world feels dominated by American chain restaurants. It seems that anywhere you go you can find McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and KFC. Yet, we are not the only ones pushing our fast food abroad, as evidenced by MOS Burger. MOS Burger is a Japanese fast food burger spot that I was a pretty big fan of when I was living in Japan, and I was so happy to find that it is also available in Taiwan (as well as a number of other Asian countries, and even Australia) that I had to have some.

Thus, I paid MOS Burger a visit to try two very different burgers. The first was their breakfast burger, which was topped with a fried egg and bacon, as well as lettuce and tomato that I made sure to order without. Unfortunately, this did not live up to my memories, as it was pretty plain and the burger was kind of rubbery. I had always remembered MOS Burger to be a step above the rest of fast food, but this was not.

Undaunted, I then went for the rice burger. I got a normal patty again with teriyaki sauce and an egg, but in the bun made primarily of rice (with barley and millet in there as well). Now this brought back memories of old. The burger just seemed to work better with the rice patty, which came served in special wrapper to allow me to eat the burger without the bun falling apart. Also, rice as a bun is just awesome, especially when you consider MOS Burger has been doing this for decades while the rest of the world seems to have recently realized all the different foods that can be used for buns.

So, while my MOS Burger experience started low, the rice bun brought it back up. MOS Burger is still unquestionably fast food and while that may not be for everyone, it worked just fine for me.