New item seeks to put four food categories in your hand all at once. In 1987, Japanese fast food chain Mos Burger debuted the rice burger, swapping out the classic hamburger bun for a pair of lightly

New item seeks to put four food categories in your hand all at once.

In 1987, Japanese fast food chain Mos Burger debuted the rice burger, swapping out the classic hamburger bun for a pair of lightly grilled discs of rice. By combining the joys of hamburgers and rice, Mos made something doubly pleasing to Japanese palates, and rice burgers have been part of their menu ever since. But now Mos is reaching new levels of multilayering its culinary appeal, with the introduction of something that combines the appeal of not just burgers and rice, but also bento boxed lunches and tempura rice bowls.

On sale as of March 12 is the Mos Rice Burger Noriben Ebitendonfu. Noriben refers to a kind of simple bento with dried seaweed (nori), while ebitendon is a traditional dish of a rice bowl (donburi) topped with tempura shrimp (ebiten), and elements of all of those go into Mos’ newest creation.

The Mos Rice Burger Noriben Ebitendonfu consists of shrimp, renkon (lotus root), carrot, onion, and mizuna greens all fried in tempura batter, sandwiched between discs of rice seasoned with the sweet sauce poured over tempura donburi. The whole thing is then wrapped in a sheet of crisp nori, of the sort you get in a noriben.

▼ As for the “fu” part of the Mos Rice Burger Noriben Ebitendonfu, it originally means “wind,” but also can be used to denote the “style” of something, as we talked about when discussing the strangest hotel buffet sign we’ve come across in Japan.

▼ Mos recommends pairing the sandwich/bento/donburi with either a cup of green tea or a cold beer.

Oddly, while the Mos Rice Burger Noriben Ebitendonfu would fit in perfectly on the Mos menu, it’s actually not available at the chain’s restaurants. Instead, it’s sold exclusively online, either at the Mos Burger online shop or through the Mos Rakuten storefront, with the Mos shop selling a pack of five for 3,900 yen (US$25) and Rakuten asking for 5,000 yen. While it does look incredibly tasty, even the Herculean stomachs of the SoraNews24 staff would have a hard time chowing through five of them in a single sitting, but you don’t have to since they ship frozen and you heat them up in the microwave before eating, which, to be fair, does look like it’ll save us a lot of time compared to making repeat runs to Mos to get more.

Related: Mos Burger online shop, Mos Rakuten storefront

Featured image: Mos Burger online shop