New Wet Rice Cracker Burger from Dom Dom breathes new life into a “miracle” snack

Snack that saved a Japanese railway gets a whole new look for a limited time.

Japanese-born fast food chain Dom Dom Hamburger has a reputation for being edgier than most, with outrageous menu offerings that take things to extreme places other chains dare not go to. ▼ Now, Dom Dom is flexing its creative muscles yet again, with a new menu item called the “ Nure Senbei Burger ” In all our years of eating fast food, we’ve never seen a burger like this.

Instead of buns, it uses two pieces of “ nure senbei ” (“ wet rice crackers ”), a famous Japanese snack that Choshi Electric Railway , a local railway in Chiba, is particularly known for selling.

As the name suggests, nure senbei differ from regular rice crackers in the sense that t hey’re delectably moist instead of crunchy , and they tend to be coated in a soy-sauce based glaze, making them a very left-field ingredient for a burger.

Dubbed a “ miracle rice cracker ”, as the struggling railway was able to survive through nure senbei sales after it began selling the snacks in 1995 , Choshi Electric Railway’s variety comes in three flavours.

Dom Dom doesn’t reveal which flavour of senbei is used in the new burger, though, so to solve that mystery, and find out what a wet rice cracker burger might taste like, we headed over to the Aeon Kaihin Makuhari branch to try it out.

It’s not easy to find the new burger, as the collaboration is limited to select stores in the Kanto region.

Even at branches that do offer it, the promotional marketing tends to be kept to a minimum, as we found out at Aeon Kaihin Makuhari, where we only spotted a small mention of it on a laminated sign next to the till. ▼ New releases are usually advertised on giant banners outside this store, but this burger is only advertised on a small A4-sized poster near the register.

The burger is priced at 890 yen (US$5.93), or 1,290 yen as part of a set, and the ingredients are listed as: Two pieces of Choshi Electric Railway’s “nure senbei”, two meat patties, lettuce, cheddar cheese, a fried egg, special burger sauce and mayonnaise.

About five minutes after ordering the burger, our remote buzzer went off to tell us our order was ready, and we went off to collect the burger from staff.

When we got back to our seat, we couldn’t stop looking at the “Nure Senbei” sticker on the packaging, which was a very weird sight for a burger, even of the Dom Dom kind. ▼ ぬれ煎餅 = Nure Senbei We then unwrapped the burger to find… ▼ … a burger without bread buns! The burger sat there staring back at us, with two wet rice crackers protecting its modesty, looking more like a couple of flat pancakes rather than senbei .