At work this afternoon a friend brought in a bag labeled simply “Quarter Pounder”. Our office is out in Shibuya, and randomly what used to be McDonald’s turned into some random post-modern simplified version of McDonald’s called simple “Quarter Pounder”. I guess they are promoting the Quarter Pounder coming to Japan (wasn’t it always here?) by changing two shops, one in Omote-sando and one in Shibuya, into Quarter-Pounder only joints. I stopped by for dinner more out of curiosity than anything else. I actually really like the idea as a short-term thing: it addresses the concerns brought up by The Paradox of Choice.
The interior is all black, with nice modern (well, modern from the point of view of the 80s) furniture, and everyone has black uniforms. It reminds me of some sort of Clockwork Orange view of restaurants of the future. The menu is great: Quarter Pounder with Cheese, or Double Quarter Pounder with cheese. You get a medium fry, and a choice of Coke, Coke Zero, or a hot coffee. All for the low price of 500 or 600 yen. You also can get them without cheese, which is awesome.
While I like the idea of simplification, I don’t know realistically how long that place will have customers with such a sparse menu. I did notice more people than usual getting take-out from there today, but I think, like me, they were drawn in by the novelty factor.
Also, I can’t believe how many people they had out there holding signs and proclaiming the arrival of “the number one most popular burger in America now available in Japan!” I’m sure this will be all over the ex-pat Japan blogosphere (Marxy at least already posted about it in the Meta-no-tame blog.)
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