Tasty golden french fries, regular or larger size

[austin_dern]

I thought porsupah might like a MOS Burger update. I tried the New Ebi Tatsuta Burger, I think; I forgot to write the name down. MOS Burger is a Japanese chain, with burgers of beef, chicken, shrimp, vegetables, or fish; served on bread or rice buns; side dishes from french fries to apple pie nuggets. It's a very Japanese place; your food's served in little baskets. Advertising suggests you ``charge yourself with joy,'' and I think they mean it. Apparently MOS stands for ``Mountain-Ocean-Sun,'' as they want an atmosphere ``as high and noble as a mountain; a heart as deep and wide as the oceans; affection as warm as the sun'', which a life of eating White Castle doesn't prepare you for. The menus try internationalizing often cryptic names with icons showing whether the essential ingredient is beef, chicken, fish, or vegetable. It's a bit pricier than Burger King, but more fun.

The Ebi Tatsua (?) burger has a rice bun, so is served in a foam wrapper. Bread buns seem to get wax paper. It's a prawn patty, which I didn't realize -- I don't care for prawn -- with seaweed, lettuce, and tempura sauce. It's about the volume of an Apple Mouse, but filling. The rice bun's soft and moist not a rice cake. I'd have liked a touch more tempura. It's not bad, but won't displace the teriyaki chicken burger or the Spicy Cheeseburger in my heart.

I got home and saw a New Dexter's Laboratory, which made me wonder if they made this season on purpose. It was dark, grim, and vaguely derivative of earlier seasons ... what happened?

Trivia: Darby Conley did not own a cat when he began Get Fuzzy. Source: Bucky Katt's Big Book of Fun: A Get Fuzzy Treasury, Darby Conley.

Currently Reading: The Compleat Enchanter, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.

Comments

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

Is it bad that when I saw MOS Burger I immediately thought of MOS Technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology)?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Nope. Happens to everybody.

[oliver-otter.livejournal.com]

Hai, "ebi" wa "shrimp" desu.

I just can't imagine a shrimpburger though...

[natasha-nelson.livejournal.com]

Pointless technical jiggerypokery:

1. Prawns (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=prawn&db=*) aren't necessarily synonymous with shrimp, depending on which dictionary you believe.
2. "Ebi" can be shrimp, prawns, or lobster (http://dict.regex.info/cgi-bin/j-e/tty/dosearch?sDict=on&H=PS&L=E&T=prawn&WC=none).
3. Most importantly, prawns were immortalised by Kevin Horton's Ramen Extravaganza! (http://www.tripoint.org/kevtris/Stupid/guide/ramen/)

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Technically a Prawn is not a shrimp in the culinary sense (Prawns have claws); but 95% of restaraunts will sell you Prawn this and Scampi that and it will just be jumbo shrimp. Sometimes with heads on for that extra illusion.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've seen the distinction carefully drawn, although there are restaurants -- particularly those that cater to upscale or tourist markets -- that try to make a fuss about shrimp versus prawn.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Most of the featured Ramen concoctions are available as ``live'' made-on-the-spot menus -- nasi goreng and yaki udon as particular specialties. I don't try to worry too much about the details; basically as long as food doesn't have suckers on it I'm fine, though as mentioned I prefer chicken to shrimp/prawn.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Making the approximately-homogeneous shrimp patty would probably be more work than it's worth -- the patty was basically two shrimps with smaller shrimps as glue -- but you can get a good sense of what it's like just next time you have some extra shrimp and some spare rice and want to experiment.

[yellow3.livejournal.com]

That sounds like the best burger place ever, and the shrimpburger description makes me hungry. I want one in Riverside now.

. . . of course, while I'm dreaming, I guess I'd also like a pony.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

MOS Burger really is a good place. I'm somewhat embarrassed at going there several times while within reach of them, but their burgers were particularly tasty, and the rice discs used in the tempura sandwiches work remarkably well - I'd love to see those appear in Western burger joints as an option.

It's also a little surprising how well the table delivery works - despite often being very busy, they'll nonetheless manage to home in on the right customer virtually instantaneously.

I wonder if they might be considering further expansion into new territories..

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Table delivery is always a bit of a mystery, but it's a Singapore tradition to have the food people bizarrely able to find the one person in a crowd who ordered something; hawker centers are renowned for it. I know how they find me in a crowd; but how do they find someone who's less obvious?

They do give out numbered plastic cards -- not just at MOS Burger, but also McDonald's and Burger King and such if they expect a wait of more than a minute or two -- but I've watched the lines of sight, and they aren't going by the cards.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It really is a good place, and it's even just fine for selling Western-style hamburgers and cheeseburgers. I can't speak for Riverside, but they have been expanding -- carefully, but expanding -- lately; if I'm not mistaken they have an outlet in Hawaii now. Can California be far behind?