A few months ago there was an article on whacky Japanese news site Sora News 24 about seven alternative regional burgers in Japan. The one that caught my eye was the kitsune burger in Toyokawa (Aichi Prefecture) but it’s difficult to imagine revisiting there anytime too soon. A far easier one to try was in Shizuoka Prefecture and it just happened to be available in a city I’d be visiting during the Japanese Golden Week holiday in early May.

At the north-western end of the Izu Peninsula is a port city called Numazu which I was to visit on Star Wars Day (May the 4th, and all that!) to see some J3 football action. Before that match I took a short bus ride down to the port area to sample a couple of deep-sea fish burgers at a local restaurant next to the popular Numazu Deep Sea Aquarium.

Numazu Burger is a cafe on a popular pedestrian street in a thriving area full of people on this particular sunny national holiday. The burgers I wanted to sample were top of  the menu and on first view it has to be said that they didn’t look too different from a regular fish burger.

The two deep-sea fish burgers use a slightly rare fish known as megisu which lives in the deep ocean. It has to be said that it’s a fairly unremarkable looking, small, silver fish! It’s very high in fat and oil which suppoesdly means that the taste is better than for a usual fish burger.

I rarely ever buy burgers at restaurants and when I do crave one I often just settle for a cheap supermarket one so 700 yen each (no fries or drink included either!) for these deep-sea fish ones felt a little expensive for me but the cost is actually quite reasonable by Japanese burger standards. Unaware of the size of the burgers I thought I’d play safe by just getting one to start with so went for the shark one as it just sounded the more interesting and unique of the two!

After just under ten minutes the burger was delivered to my table in a basket. It was quite small in size with shredded cabbage above the fish patty and a slice of American cheese beneath it. The taste was rather superb and the flavour of the two blended shark meats was really flavourful. As I was still hungry (I didn’t eat breakfast earlier that  morning), and wondering when I’d next be in Numazu, decided to push the boat out a bit and splash out another 700 yen on the restaurant’s signature deep-sea fish burger.

This one came almost instantly and it has to be said that it was fantastic too though. The aurora sauce (a creamy tomato-based sauce) really brings out such a delicious taste which makes it a little tastier than your typical fillet-o-fish burger at McDonalds!

So if it’s such a tasty fish then why is it not eaten more widely? That is because it loses its freshness too quickly to be transported to other parts of Japan. The country’s loss is Shizuoka’s gain!

• Numazu Burger is located at 83-1 Senbonminatocho, Numazu, Shizuoka-ken. It is open from 9am till 6pm weekdays and 9am till 8pm at weekends.

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