Aldebaran Burgers Tokyo and why you shouldn’t waste your time

13/20

  8.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.5

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Thumbs up

• Well executed burger using high quality ingredients
• My favourites fries in the world

Thumbs down

• Reservations only, which means you can’t satisfy a last minute burger craving
• Compulsory to order one drink per person
• There likely are better things to eat in Japan for most people

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If you’ve followed me long enough, you will know that when I’m in Japan I go pretty hard with my meals. Multiple sushi, tempura and kaiseki meals back to back – you’ll pretty easily mistakenly think that I love fine dining. But my friends know that deep down, I’m really just a B-class cuisine type of guy. You see this manifest itself through the several tonkatsu, tendon and Japanese curry meals scattered throughout every trip. Even less people know that one of my favourite B-class cuisines is burgers. It should come as little surprise though; after all, I did make my own Sydney burger tier list.

The inevitable question that everyone asks when they find out that I love burgers is – “have you tried Aldebaran?“. The answer for the longest time was “no“, which would lead audible confusion. The simple truth is I just never had the time nor the spare meal slot. But in February 2024 I found myself with an unexpected extra week in Japan with 24 hours notice so I figured if I didn’t find time to go now, I would never make it to Aldebaran.

Real Baran Burger

And so I called to book, ordered my compulsory drink and waited for my first Aldebaran burger.

While many say it use to be better before its move to Azabu-Jūban, it is still considered one of the best burgers in Japan and known as a “must visit” for burger lovers. I can certainly see why – every component of the meal was considered and thoughtful, including the sides. While everyone raves about the onion rings, which are certainly very good, the pièce de résistance for me were the fries. The perfect archetypal crisp with a subtle but consistent salinity and allium flavour.

The perfect fries

I think you got the title of this article wrong, Eric. All this sounds great, why shouldn’t I visit Aldebaran? Well, for a few reasons.

As delicious as the burger is, it’s not perfect. It’s a very decadent burger, I think too decadent for all but the most hardcore burger lovers. As high quality as the heavily marbled 175g of prime wagyu patty and bespoke “brioche” buns are, fat on fat makes it easy to argue that the burger lacks balance.

Their house special and most popular burger is the Real Baran which features a soft-cooked egg *cue controversy*, cheddar, teriyaki sauce and spicy onion chutney. The teriyaki sauce was deliciously unique the first few bites, with heavy diminishing returns thereafter. Another popular burger is the Extra Cheese where, as the name suggests, extra melted cheese is dumped on your burger when you’re halfway through. Makes for a good story maybe, but feels like it detracts from the burger itself.

Extra Cheese Burger

My main gripe though, and the reason it’s taken this burger fan 6 years to come here, is that while Aldebaran is objectively delicious, given the huge variety of excellent Japanese options that exists, there are many other foods you should be eating in Japan that have a greater marginal gain over what you can get back home. Sure, if you are a local with unlimited time, this is one of the better burger experiences you can get in Japan. But if you’re a traveller, Aldebaran is what I consider to be “poor resource allocation”.

And this is why the burgers at Aldebaran are good but you probably shouldn’t waste your time coming here. But if you want to ignore all that advice and still want a burger, I would head to Henry’s. From a pure burger perspective, the Henry’s special harami burger (pre-order only) is better.

Aldebaran (アルデバラン)
3-3-1 Azabujuban Minato, Tokyo (map)
+81 3-6459-4888
https://tabelog.com/en/tokyo/A1306/A130603/13229075/

Onion Rings

Vibe

So fellow foodies, what’s the best burger you’ve ever had?