In fact I remember seeing these “Big America” burgers when we were in Japan filming last winter, though none of us tried them. The idea is that each region/state/city gets their own America burger. Of course, not all states are represented, not even by a long shot. Most Japanese, let alone Americans, don’t know what a North Dakota is, after all, and Ohio is just how you say “good morning.” Basically, they’re picking and choosing famous spots from around the US, figuring out a stereotyped feature of that place (missing completely, sometimes), and then putting it in a burger.

Let’s take a look at these “Big America” burgers while we wait for McDonald’s line of “Small Japan Burgers” to be released.

Texas Burger & Texas Burger 2

This burger’s first run was so popular that it got itself a sequel! The Texas Burger 2 comes back with a “wilder” taste (not sure what to think of that), and has chili beans, bacon, onions, a slice of American cheese, old-fashioned mustard relish, and a quarter-pound of beef. I think the creators of this burger watched one too many cowboy movies.

Yeehaw!

Grand Canyon Burger

Sadly, they don’t cut the Grand Canyon Burger in half when serving it to you, nor does it contain donkey meat, but it does have an egg McMuffin-like round egg disc, cheddar AND mozzarella cheese, crispy bits of onion, steak sauce, and Big Mac-esque bun and beef layout. Not sure how this has anything to do with the Grand Canyon, but maybe they were going for some kind of Arizona vibe? Even that doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe if we watch the commercial it will all come together?

No, I’m way more confused now.

Las Vegas Burger

Once again, I feel like McDonalds failed to capture the essence of the location this burger was named after. They should have a system where they fill one in a million burger containers with money, then at least there’d be some gambling involved. But no, they had to go with LV staples like sauteed sliced beef and onions, lettuce, and cream cheese? That cream cheese is so money, baby.

Broadway Burger

Broaaadway!! ♬ Nothing sings “Broadway” like mozzarella, bacon cured pastrami-style, mixed vegetables, and a mustard and cream cheese sauce. Okay, I take that back. Many things sing “Broadway” more than the featured Broadway Burger items listed above.

California Burger

California is a big place, but this burger tries to capture it all, from the sands of Los Angeles to the redwoods of the north. Can you guess what makes this burger “California?” I would have guessed avocado, but came away pleasantly surprised. Between two “artisan” buns there’s a quarter-pound of beef, spicy cheese, bacon strips, tomato slices, and lettuce. This isn’t all that “California,” though, so they up the ante and top it with a special sauce made from red wine that’s actually produced in California! Gotta give this one an “A” for effort, at the very least.

Beverly Hills Burger

Unlike the “improvement sequels” that we see with the Texas and New York burgers, the Beverly Hills Burger is something unique and different from its geological predecessor, the California burger. This burger’s unique features are: guacamole, cheese, Cesar salad dressing, an egg, and the meat of abandoned chihuahuas. For some reason I don’t see the people of Beverly Hills ever buying or associating themselves with a burger like this.

Idaho Burger

As if you didn’t see this one coming. The Idaho burger’s special feature? Potatoes. Like, a whole breakfast hashbrown worth of taters, but more circle-shaped. In addition to this is bacon, onions, a quarter-pound of beef, cheese, a peppery sauce, grainy mustard, and an onion bun, because Idaho makes a lot of onions too.

What kind folk you have out there in Idaho!

Miami Burger

The Miami Burger simultaneously concludes that “all Hispanic people eat at Taco Bell!” and that “Florida is filled with these homogenous Hispanic peoples.” The purpose of this burger is to evoke the feeling of “tacos” and in order to do that they insert tortilla chips, shredded cheese (because that’s so tacos!), a “spicy tomato chili sauce” (sounds like an unholy matrimony of salsa and ketchup), a quarter-pound beef patty, and something that looks like it might be taco meat, but I’m not totally sure. For all I know it’s meat made from a leg that washed up on Miami beach.

Personally, if I were McDonalds, I would have taken the “Florida is filled with retirees” approach and blended the burger into a smoothie and added vitamins to it, but I suppose that would be too much work.

New York Burger

Kind of a boring burger, to be honest, the New York burger has Monterrey Jack Cheese, bacon, tomato, lettuce, and a grainy mustard. Maybe they realized that this burger wasn’t all that great, which is why they made a sequel to the New York burger and zeroed in on Manhattan:

Manhattan Burger

They weren’t happy with the New York burger so they made a follow-up. The Manhattan burger has everything that the New York burger has but adds a slice of pastrami and two servings of sour cream sauce to provide a “modern, airy, refined taste.” Mission accomplished? I’m not so sure.

If that McDonalds car was stuck in the middle of the intersection in real New York people would be dead right now. DEAD. Then who would eat your burgers? Fuggedaboudit.

Hawaiian Burger

Did the Hawaiian burger just blow my mind by not including pineapple in any shape or form? Of all the opportunities that they had to capture the (stereotypical) essence of a geographical location in America, this was their chance! Still, it doesn’t look too bad. The Hawaiian burger features a special gravy, an egg-disc, chopped lettuce, an American cheese slice, bacon, and of course a lot of beef. It looks like they were going for a pseudo loco moco, so I gotta credit them on not going straight for the obvious pineapple cop out.

Now the only thing missing is spam. Lots and lots of delicious spam.

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There you have it. I summed up the answer to “what is America” via McDonalds hamburgers eaten in Japan based off of American places. If this trend continues, I can only imagine what they’ll come up with next. Maybe a crab/salmon/oil burger from Alaska (that actually sounds good)? Or what about an Oregon burger that’s topped with kale and kombucha? Maybe they could even do a North Dakota burger where you open the box and there’s nothing there. The possibilities are endless!

If McDonalds Japan were to do a burger based off your state/city/region/province/country/landmark, what do you think they would do? Not so much what they should do, but how will your location be stereotyped in burger form? Let me know in the comments.

Bonus: Here’s a papercraft I came across of that weird McDonalds RV that’s in all the “Big America” commercials.

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Bonus Wallpapers!

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As you might have guessed from my Ramen Survival Guide, between all of the different broths, styles, and toppings, you can find a ton of different varieties of ramen in noodle shops in Japan.

For most people, that variety is enough; but some ramen shops go completely off the map to push the limits of ramen and entice customers with novelty dishes. Strange toppings and unusual broths help noodle shops stand out from an increasingly saturated market.

The strangest thing of all? Most of these strange dishes are actually really, really good. Here are some of the strangest ramen dishes that Japanese noodle shops have cooked up in recent years:

Tequila Ramen

Unsurprisingly, Japan makes notoriously bad Mexican food, so I was a little apprehensive when I first heard about the tequila ramen at Kouno noodle shop (麺や河野). But against all odds, the Tokyo restaurant’s concoction of lime, a shot of tequila, and cilantro work well together.

Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that the combination tastes good—after all, Vietnamese phở also uses lime and cilantro as garnish, so maybe throwing in some tequila isn’t that radical after all.

Ramen Burger

Japanese fast food chain Lotteria is notorious for cooking up some strange, strange hamburgers; past hits have included the oversized shrimp burger named in honor of Japanese comedian Sugi-chan, and a nine patty burger to celebrate an anime movie.

More recently, Lotteria teamed up with ramen restaurant Menya Musashi to create a ramen burger. A batch of ramen is fried up in the shape of a patty, then pork and mayonnaise or added before it’s placed between two buns.

Not quite the traditional way that you see ramen served, but more or less par for the course for Lotteria.

Ice Cream Ramen, Colorful Broth

If you’re looking for strange ramen, look no farther than Tokyo ramen shop Kikuya (菊や). Kikuya offers unusual ramen dishes in all varieties, using all sorts of ingredients and tricks to interest even the most dyed-in-the-wool ramen eater.

For one, there’s the color selection:

At Kikuya, you can get ramen with broth of virtually any color, including purple, red, and sky blue. While it looks pretty unnatural, the colorful broth is anything but; the color comes from natural ingredients like red cabbage, and clever mixing.

Kikuya also offers a ramen dish topped with an ice cream cone slide down the middle. According to ramen lore, a child came into the shop on a hot day and asked for ice cream, joking with the chef that an ice cream ramen would be ideal.

Being the genius that he is, the owner decided to turn this joke into a reality. Before long, Kikuya’s ice cream ramen became its signature dish.

The strange menu at Kikuya is way too long to go through in full here—between the colorful broth, ice cream ramen, and other oddities like cheese (think Kraft singles) ramen, cocoa ramen, and battery (think alkaline) ramen, you could spend weeks sampling Kikuya’s unorthodox offerings.

Pineapple and Strawberry Ramen

Ramen is a very savory dish; you don’t grab a bowl of ramen when you’ve got the hankering for something sweet. Because of that (and the fact that you don’t find too much fruit in ramen to begin with), the sometimes sweet dishes from Tokyo ramen shop Papapapapine (パパパパパイン) are a little surprising.

Papapapapine’s most famous dish is its pineapple ramen, which comes complete with chunks of pineapple and a pineapple-based broth. You can see Papapapapine’s pride in its specialty dish from the pineapple-shaped lantern hanging outside of the shop, its pineapple-yellow counters, and the ceramic pineapples adorning the restaurant.

Aside from its signature dish, Papapapapine also offers a strawberry ramen, aptly named Susususustrawberry. Like the pineapple ramen, Susususustrawberry has chunks of fruit floating in the soup, and the broth is strawberry-based with a little cream.

You can add condensed milk to taste, for a combination that seems more like a dessert than a meal. Despite the unorthodox combinations, reports are that both dishes are actually pretty good.

Taco Ramen

Ivan Orkin is a New Yorker who’s famous around the world for being one of the few gaijin to open a successful ramen business (アイバンラーメン AKA Ivan Ramen) in the fiercely competitive Japanese market.

While being a gaijin has been more than enough to make Ivan Ramen stand out, Orkin’s uses some unusual. In addition to using rye, an unorthodox ingredient by Japanese standards, to make the noodles themselves, a few years back Orkin created his own take on taco rice—taco ramen.

Taco rice is actually a pretty common dish in Japan, but it’s unusual for ramen to be used as a substitute for rice, and Orkin, an American from New York City, adds his own American touch to the dish.

In addition to the house-made noodles that Ivan Ramen has become known for, the taco ramen has lettuce, tomato, and beef with taco seasoning. No broth whatsoever, nor any of the typical toppings you’d see on your average bowl of ramen.

It was a seasonal special a few years ago, so you won’t be able to get it anymore; which is unfortunate, because it sounds delicious (and would probably go well with the tequila ramen).

Ramen has changed a lot over the last century as it’s come to almost dominate Japan’s culinary landscape. New techniques and approaches, like miso and double soup ramen, have become commonplace.

So while you probably won’t find chunks of pineapple in purple broth in your typical ramen shop anytime soon, I think that it’s great that ramen chefs across Japan continue to dream up new dishes that push the boundaries of ramen.