Overrated hamburgers and Japan’s answer to the Soup Nazi

The Soup Nazi is a memorable Seinfeld episode about a soup restaurant with a reputation for delicious soups whose owner has a fiery temper. Nicknamed ‘the Soup Nazi’ because of the excessively strict rules he imposes on his customers, the owner character was based on Al Yeganeh, a real life New York restaurant owner who was feared by people who came to eat his excellent soups. This episode highlights the paradox that if a restaurant’s food has a great reputation then people will eat there regardless of the service they receive, something I witnessed first hand when I visited Sasebo last month.

The Restaurant
Located near Nagasaki, Sasebo is home to a large US Navy base and this has resulted in a proliferation of hamburger restaurants in the city. Arguably the most famous of these is the Log Kit　(website now offline), its popularity reflected by the number of cars parked outside and the line of people waiting outside. Doubtless this fame can be attributed to the restaurant having been featured on TV along with its female owner, Nobuyo Maruta – ‘the Sasebo Burger Nazi’.

Upon entering the Log Kit I immediately noticed the photos of Maruta - the self-proclaimed ‘hambaaga no haha’ (’mother of hamburgers’) - plastered all over the walls and it wasn’t long before I saw the woman herself, scurrying around barking orders at her staff. Some of my friends had arrived much earlier than the group I was with and were told they would have to wait 30 minutes for their food; they had in fact ended up waiting for over an hour, and when we arrived we were told we would have to wait two hours (a long time, but we were prepared to wait because of the Log Kit’s reputation for quality burgers).

Our experience at the cash register was a taste of things to come. Despite there being both native Japanese and native English speakers in our group the girl serving us had difficulty communicating in either language. After some confusion (incredibly, as there were only three items on the menu!) we eventually managed to complete our order and were given plastic chips with our order numbers on them.

The Incident
With a long time to wait before the food was going to be ready we sat down at a table and checked out the interior of the restaurant. It’s a small place so we could see everything that was going on in there: the constant stream of people coming in to collect take out orders, the woefully inefficient order taking and hamburger production set-up, and the Sasebo Burger Nazi’s mentalist behaviour and interaction with her customers.

Perhaps the best way to describe this is, as one of my friends remarked, that she didn’t appear to be listening to anyone, mixing bluntly issuing commands continuing with self-absorbed monologue. As the restaurant got busier her behaviour became more and more extreme, making me wonder whether she was suffering from rampant egomania, senile dementia, mad cow disease, or a combination of all three.

The people sitting at the table next to us were kicked out of the restaurant virtually as soon as they’d finished eating, before Maruta came over to our table and curtly told us to put away the playing cards we were using to kill time (not unreasonable behaviour on our behalf bearing in mind we were told we would have to wait two hours for our food). A few minutes later she returned, this time snatching the plastic order number chips off our table before storming off.

Having waited about an hour since we placed our order we figured she was going to serve us our food early. We were proven wrong however, when she came back and demanded to know what order numbers were on the chips she’d taken away as she had lost them. Apparently she thought we’d already eaten and that’s why she had removed the chips (suggesting that even she doesn’t know the ordering system in her own restaurant works), but as we hadn’t expected to be served until later we hadn’t checked the numbers.

Looking like she realised she’d messed up but unwilling to apologise, she brought a stack of order papers from the kitchen and made us go through them all to find our order. This was made more difficult by her rudeness and the fact that the restaurant was only serving one set meal that day, so all the orders were virtually identical apart from quantity. We eventually found our order and Maruta’s embarrassment was sufficient that she promptly brought our food out.

The Food
I wanted to complain about the French fries – only 7(!) of them in a bag the same size as a regular fry bag at McDonald’s – but thought better of it since I noticed that my friends and everyone else in the restaurant had received similarly-meagre portions, and besides by that stage I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. As for the burger, it was nothing special and certainly not worth waiting an hour for. It was big but flat and thin (making its large size something of an optical illusion), and the taste and quality were average – I’ve honestly had far superior hamburgers at Kua Aina Burger and the Hard Rock Café, while even Freshness Burger and Mos Burger offer better food.

The irony of all this is that whereas with the Soup Nazi the soup was amazing and worth enduring the restaurant owner’s behaviour for, in the case of the Sasebo Burger Nazi the food was disappointing, which begs the question why the Log Kit Restaurant has such a good reputation.

The Reputation
The answer to this lies in a combination of factors, one of which simply being location – the city of Sasebo is well known throughout Japan for its hamburgers and the Log Kit has naturally cashed in on this. Additionally – as with all successful businesses – it has a unique selling point, something that sets it apart from the competition. This is mainly the size of the hamburgers, and the restaurant promotes the challenge of trying to eat a whole one. Sitting in the restaurant I saw numerous people having their photo taken while attempting to eat a Jumbo Hamburger, which is quite amusing bearing in mind the average American would need to eat at least two of them to feel full! The other unique selling point the Log Kit promotes is the healthiness of its hamburgers, although it provides no nutrition or calorie information to back up this claim.

Perhaps most instrumental in establishing the restaurant’s reputation however is the fact that it has been featured on TV. Restaurants featured on TV rarely fail to generate a huge amount of interest as Japanese viewers tend to unquestioningly accept what they see on TV as true. I find this curious bearing in mind the number of dodgy dealings by TV companies that have been exposed, ranging from fictional ‘news’ stories and interviews to the recent false claims about the life-prolonging health benefits of natto (fermented beans). It therefore wouldn’t surprise me if restaurants pay TV producers to be featured on TV and I always take these things with a pinch of salt. Regardless of whether TV they are shown as disguised advertising or impartial recommendation though, it’s certainly an effective method of getting favourable publicity and establishing a good reputation.

One final reason for the Log Kit’s success is its small size. By producing small numbers of hamburgers slowly the restaurant ensures demand exceeds supply, something that really appeals to the Japanese love of exclusivity. And, restaurant’s size results not only in a constant demand for its burgers, but also in one other major benefit. Most customers don’t eat in the restaurant, instead telephoning ahead to place a take out order and collecting their food when it’s ready; because they only briefly set foot inside the restaurant their chances of experiencing the wrath of the Sasebo Burger Nazi are greatly reduced, and this prevents the Log Kit’s reputation from being damaged.

The good news is that apart from the original Sasebo restaurant the Log Kit has several other branches around Japan so, if you still want to, you can sample the hamburgers without a side order of rudeness from the Sasebo Burger Nazi.

Photos courtesy of e-Nagasaki and Kengo Preston.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Articles in English, Out and About in Japan, Food and Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.