Chocolate Hamburgers

Lotteria’s selling hamburgers with chocolate sauce now. Japan does this thing where they just try stuff without asking permission first. No market research, no focus group—just someone in an office deciding on a Thursday: What if chocolate? On a burger? and apparently the answer is yes, here you go, four euros.

I remember when they did chocolate fries. Same vibe. That specific mix of curiosity and absolute confusion that makes you want to buy one and regret it immediately. I went to McDonald’s once with a jar of Nutella and a spoon, genuinely wondering if that combination would work. It didn’t. The whole thing was stupid. But I still think about it sometimes because the trying part felt more interesting than it had any right to be.

There’s something I actually like about that willingness to fail in public. Most food companies would never let this happen—they’d test it to death before release and it would never survive. Japan’s food industry moves differently. They’re comfortable being dumb about it. And sure, most of these novelties disappear. But sometimes someone buys it. Sometimes it becomes a thing. Either way, you tried something ridiculous and that counts for something.