We tried it: Lotte's ramen burger
Lotteria's ramen burger / Courtesy of Johanne Miller
By Lee Min-hyung
If you’ve checked into your Facebook account recently and have any friends in Korea, you may have seen Lotteria’s new ramen burger on your newsfeed. The chicken-patty-and-ramen-bun creation, available for a limited time at the fast-food chain, is certainly hard to miss.
Ramen burgers are not a new creation - variations on the sandwich have become popular in New York and elsewhere. But it appears to be the first major ramen burger to be sold in Korea, so this reporter headed over to the Lotteria at Seoul Station to try the product and see what people had to say.
Regardless of opinions - which have been mixed - the product has managed to generate interest, with the chain selling 120,000 burgers on Tuesday, the first day of its release, according to Oh Tek-yong, a senior assistant at Lotteria’s PR department. The chain plans to sell 500,000 burgers for the special event.
The interest was also evident at Seoul Station, where it took more than 15 minutes to get a ramen burger during lunch hour.
The sandwich comes wrapped in clear packaging, through which one can see the hockey-puck shaped buns made of noodles. The noodles are surprisingly soft, and hold together fairly well - at least through the first few bites.
That’s when things get a bit challenging. Strands of the noodles begin to fall off, leaving the eater to chew the meat and simultaneously slurp up the ramen. Meanwhile, the meat is slathered in a spicy barbecue sauce.
One 11-year-old boy gave the sandwich the thumbs up.
“The chicken patty and ramen seem to work well. The noodles fell apart easily, but the taste was not bad."
Steve Miller, a media personality and host of The Korea Times podcast, headed to a Lotteria to try the burger, and detailed the experience on a video blog (www.qiranger.com).
“The noodle (in the burger) tasted just like a normal ramen noodle, and the chicken patty was nothing special and rather small,” he said in an interview. “It was nothing special.” Miller noted, however, that the spice sauce “was good.”
Still, if enough people like their noodles in the form of a burger, the company plans to make the product a regular item, Oh said.