The chain’s goth-like burger, with black buns, black cheese and black sauce, is a bizarre addition to the menu. But it’s not the only food to go back to black

Burger King launches black burger in Japan – and no, it's not just burnt

It may look like leftover burnt scraps of a late-summer barbecue, stuffed with melted tyre fillings, but this bizarre black combination is just Burger King’s latest menu option for Japan.

The incinerated-looking buns are darkened with bamboo charcoal, and the same has been used to give the poisonous-looking cheese its melted-tar look. The beef burgers, meanwhile, have added black pepper, and are topped with an onion and garlic sauce mixed with squid ink.

The international chain says it is the third time it has released a goth-like burger (the others had black buns and black ketchup) and diners have so far given them a “favourable reception.”

Strange as they seem, however, Burger King’s Kuro Pearl and Kuro Diamond are not the first black burgers around.

The Spanish dish arroz negre, a rice casserole made with squid ink. Photograph: Alamy

Opso in London does a fish burger and squid ink bun, while French burger chain Quick created a black bun – named Dark Vador – in 2012 to mark the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D.

Then there are the regional dishes that prove black foods are more than a gimmick, from the Spanish Arros Negre (a cuttlefish and rice dish) to squid ink risotto, black pasta – and, of course, black pudding.

Black pasta. Photograph: Alamy

While in 2009, jelly-makers Bompas and Parr held an all-black banquet using, among other things, black truffles, blackberries and caviar. The idea, according to Sam Bompas, was based around the fact that “black food is actually a luxury, a way of laughing at death to overcome it”.

It may be an extravagant claim for the purveyors of fast food, but it certainly adds a dash of danger to your burger.

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