- It's a Thursday. It's 10 o'clock in the morning,
and because we're severely jet-lagged,
obviously the best thing to do
is to go and get one of the world's most expensive burgers
at The Oak Door Steakhouse at the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo.
Now, this burger costs 100,000 yen,
which is close to about $1,000.
I've never tried anything as expensive as that,
and it comes with a magnum of Champagne.
So let's go and try it out.
This is the Golden Giant burger.
Depending on the exchange rate,
this burger comes in at $910 to $1,000.
The man behind the menu?
This is US chef Patrick Shimada,
who designed the fusion menu here.
- It's like a classic American steakhouse
with a little bit of Japanese touches.
For lunchtime, it's mostly burgers.
So we're known in the area for our burger,
so, I mean, it's an international restaurant.
I mean, I'm from the US, and I'm mixed:
Japanese, German, Irish.
Growing up in southern California,
there's a lot of Latin influence down there.
My grandfather was a fisherman,
so I grew up with a lot of sashimi.
Ju: So what's in it?
There's the burger bun topped with gold leaf.
Garlic-saffron sauce.
Lettuce and tomato.
One-kilo beef patty,
which has been shipped in from the US
and ground in Tokyo.
A layer of Japanese cheddar cheese.
Foie gras, shaved truffles,
and that Japanese specialty, Wagyu beef.
- This Wagyu beef that we used for this burger was Yamagata.
So we used the Yamagata sirloin,
so it's an A4-grade Wagyu.
- But how does it stack up?
You've got some of the highest-ticket burgers,
like the $5,000 Fleurburger in Las Vegas.
While the final price of that is high,
it comes with a 1995 bottle of Pétrus
retailing at nearly the entire cost.
Also, size-wise, it's as big as a chopping board.
This one weighs 1 kilo for the patty alone,
but still nowhere near as large
as a 74-kilo hamburger at Mallie's Sports Grill and Bar
in Michigan.
But we're looking at some more quality ingredients here.
And now, for the taste test.
Just looking at it, they had to cut into it
like it was a giant cake.
It looks really, really vibrant.
I can see some of the meat layers in there
as well as some tomato and some lettuce,
and the whole thing is just dripping
in this really gorgeous yellow sauce.
I just want to eat it so much
that I'm just gonna go for a bite.
Already, there's so much sauce that's dripping all over me.
The prime-beef patty just really tastes so luxurious.
But just the softness of this meat,
really, really soft, just melts in your mouth.
The burger bun is actually made with fresh milk
as well as sugar, which is what gives it
that really springy quality,
but it's actually not too heavy,
which I'm really surprised by.
The whole thing has a lightness to it.
Look, I know $1,000 is a lot for ingredients,
but the market for Wagyu and foie gras
is an expensive one,
and this place doesn't hold back with the servings of them.
Even the lettuce and tomato are from Japan's stable
of photogenic, expensive fruits and vegetables
that taste miles better than anything you'd get
in a conventional restaurant.
Any downsides?
Well, it was hard to taste everything
because there were lots of heavy, competing flavors,
and the truffle got a bit lost
in the Wagyu and foie gras at the top of the burger.
But what was the highlight?
Probably the highlights of it were
the layer of Japanese cheddar cheese.
Really wasn't expecting it,
I thought it was gonna be American cheese,
and it was punchy, it was flavorful,
it was vintage, proper mature cheddar,
which was so, so good.
And then also because there was gold leaf
on the top of the bun,
it was also sesame.
The bread was springy,
but probably the highlight has to be
the 1-kilo beef patty,
which was just melt in the mouth.
This place also gets bonus points though
for carving it up at the end into takeaway bags.
Nothing thrown away,
leaving us with the most expensive takeout in Tokyo.