Kracie Happy Kitchen (HK) Hamburger Review

So this time around, the weirdness has been kicked up to a 26.78 on a 1-10 scale. With Kracie’s Happy Kitchen Hamburger, a handsome sir/madam can make their very own dinner date for two. I don’t know how else to describe this. Here’s some key stats to take away today:

Brand: Kracie

Name: Happy Kitchen Hamburger

Engl(r)ish Slogan: “Happy Kitchen” (well, that’s kind of boring)

Mass: 22g

Total Calories per Mass: 95 calories

Price: $5.65 at T&T

Cost per Calorie: 5.95 cents/calorie (damn, that’s expensive yo!)

Colourful box!

Japanese!

More wasteful packaging!

The box is a colourful smorgasbord of katakana and the typical fast-food vanity photos. Like every good Big Mac, Whopper or Baconator, this is a bit of foreshadowing for the actual appearance of the treat. Flipping the box over, there are some instructions about to create the snack. Now I can’t read Japanese, but even by just looking at the pictures, one can see that there’s a lot of stirring involved.

When you open up the box, bags upon bags of powder make their presence known. At this moment, I was simply just flabbergasted, thinking to myself about all the real fast food that could have been bought for the dough. It does come with a nice little plastic spatula and knife, for use in the back-breaking manual labour to come.

Looking like the reject pile of ramen flavour packs

Quick tip for all happy kitchen chef de cuisines here. You’re going to NEED to provide a microwave to turn the powder into something you can eat, and having a pair of scissors on hand is VERY USEFUL so that you can make it look half as nice as you see on the box. I was making this at home, so no worries there; however, if I had wanted to be more ironic than the other kids at school and eat a Happy Kitchen meal for lunch, some preparation is going to be needed so that I don’t look like I’m trying to snort some coke.

Making my mini meal had to be the most labour-intensive ordeal outside of digging holes alongside a certain Yelnats. Even with help, I spent a good 30 minutes making the Happy Kitchen Hamburger mini combo. If McDonald’s took this long to make a burger & fries combo, they’d have gone out of business way before the Big Mac was invented to clog the arteries of people everywhere.

I spent a lot of time cutting the many place mats and cutting mats out of the packaging (props to creative use of packaging!) and making the fries, patties, bun, and cheese. The process for making each part of the meal is pretty similar. Dump powder and water into the mixing tray. Stir it up like you’re churning butter. Put your goop into the microwave, or in the case of the cheese, catsup, and coke, marvel at how the powder and water looking and smell eerily similar to the real thing. And when the fries, patties, and bun are out of the microwave, do the same thing. I was a little freaked out by how the bags of powder transformed into pretty convincing facsimiles of their normal-food counterparts with just a few drops of water and a bit of time in the microwave. This speaks a lot about Japanese ingenuity (or weirdness) and the fast food we feed ourselves on.

Step 1: Cutting my mini sinks

Step 2: adding the powder for the bun

Step 3: adding the patty powder

The finished patty product

Step 5: Assembling the burger

Step 6: Spreading them condiments

With this nasty prep work out of the way, here are some glamour shots!

When it comes to actually eating it, it’s like eating the culinary equivalent of a grade schooler’s copy of the Mona Lisa, with the Mona Lisa in this case being a McDonald’s Big Mac. You can see the vague resemblance, and you can taste some semblance of fast food flavour. However, the two are as far apart as LeBron James and your high-school bench warmer. The fries were crusty, the buns had no toasted crispness, and the ketchup simply looked like radioactive blood. Unlike most fast food combos, this one left me feeling very hungry afterwards.

So, to sum up, it was one of those experiences I’m happy to only try once, much like getting extremely drunk one night and waking up hugging a toilet. Now this doesn’t mean I’m not willing to try some of the other things this company has to offer. If you are reading this Kracie, I am open for review samples!

Dusted

Final Score: 2 Calbee Dogs out of 5

 

Shimizu Caramel Latte Baumkuchen Review

all wrapped up

To kick off the beginning of my expanding waistline, we have a Japanese snack with its origins in the land of schnitzel and lederhosen. Here are the vital stats for today's reunion of World War II allies:

Brand: Shimizu
Name: Caramel Latte Baumkuchen
Engl(r)ish slogan: "Soft texture and gentle sweetness"
Mass: 90g
Total Calories per Mass: 423 calories
Price: $3.50 at my local Korean convenience store
Cost per Calorie (CPC) Rating: 0.83 cents/calorie

the back - look at the sexy importer's label

The wrapper is quite wonderfully constructed, with a nice matte-finish texture not unlike that of baby`s floater tube and flower printing resembling the pattern on a kimono. This is quite in line considering the cost of this forbidden goodness.

teaser shot

Opening the package, we are greeted by an donut-like thing with enough rings in its construction to top that of Saturn. The cake has an angel-food like look to it, which provides a bit of substance to the slogan`s claim of a "soft texture". After leaving the Baumkuchen on the wrapper typing up this portion of the review, it has left marks of oil on the wrapper, giving away its artery-clogging potential.

age rings - hope this snack's not 17 years old!

to get a sense of the texture

 When the baumkuchen went into my mouth, I knew immediately that their slogan of "soft texture and gentle sweetness" wasn't legit and not just marketing hyperbole. There was a gentle hint of coffee mocha to perk up the flavour, and it worked well with the moistness of the cake. There was none of the dryness you can taste sometimes in cheaper angel food and pound cake; however, in those cases, you do get more calories for your money. The Caramel Latte baumkuchen left an aftertaste which while not offensive, was also not very special in any sense of the word.

didn't stay that way for much longer

To sum it all up, the Shimizu Baumkuchen was a nice little snack that would have been a very good staple piece in an afternoon tea setting. It's moistness and inoffensive aftertaste worked very well to its favour, as many times cakes like these would have left my mouth desperate for water or saddle it with a sickening aftertaste that made me wish for mouthwash. However, for the price, there wasn't enough orgasms in my mouth to make the baumkuchen an extremely satisfying snacking experience.

Final Score: 3.5 Calbee Dogs out of 5

until next time

So you've come across the weird part of the Internet again, have you? Well, welcome! At wack-ass asian snacks, one asian seeks to document his adventures in developing a greater understanding of asian culture... through the consumption of snacks.

Every review will be a combination of unedited writing and smartphone pics that can be found on millions of other places in the Interwebs! Enjoy and happy snacking!