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In watching virtually every series that the late, great Anthony Bourdain made, I came to learn that food is perhaps *the* most important characteristic when it comes to defining different cultures.
This is to say that, thanks to Bourdain, I’ve always tried to be conscious of mocking other cultures’ culinary quirks. But what Burger King’s Thailand division has recently cooked up is truly testing my ability to bite my tongue.
Titled the “Real Cheese Burger”, Thailand’s Burger King locations are apparently serving a sandwich that comes with 20 pieces of American cheese and nothing else. Just to be clear, that’s 20 pieces of cheese between two pieces of bread with no other meat or vegetables involved. And it’s as horrifying as you’d imagine it is.
“This is no joke. This is for real,” Burger King’s official Thai Facebook page said in a post on July 9.
Burger King
The item launched on Thai menus Sunday, at a reduced price of 109 Thai baht ($3.1), compared with the usual price of 380 baht ($10.9). It quickly went viral on social media in Thailand, with many users on TikTok posting videos of them trying the new sandwich.
At one Burger King branch in Bangkok on Tuesday, a shift manager was overheard saying the outlet had to stop taking delivery orders so they could have enough stock left for walk-in diners. [via CNN]
The “Real Cheeseburger” is essentially the Kurger Bing parody Instagram account come to life, which has been making fun of the fast food industry (Burger King in particular) — and popularizing the phrase “beesechussy” — for years now.
Naturally, it didn’t take Kurger Bing long to make a meme out of the horrifying Real Cheeseburger.
Sometimes, Americans will come across fast food items that are exclusively served in foreign countries which makes us jealous because they aren’t sold here. Thailand’s Real Cheese Burger is certainly not one of them.