Japanese restaurant selling ‘girl’s hair-flavoured’ chicken

A Japanese fried chicken restaurant is offering customers “girl’s hair” chicken, designed to evoke the scent and taste of women’s hair.

Fast food chain Tenka Torimasu unveiled the latest addition to its line of sauces, which typically include more familiar flavours such as wasabi mayonnaise and sweet chilli, earlier this month, English-language Japanese news site SoraNews24 reports.

Girl’s hair chicken is far from the first eye-catching stunt staged by the restaurant, which has previously offered “girl’s feet” and “girl’s sweat” chicken.

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So how does “girl’s hair chicken compare?

While the name might not exactly get your tastebuds salivating, the dish itself is more like “an artistic interpretation of girl’s hair through the medium of fried chicken toppings”, says SoraNews24.

Girl’s hair chicken turns out to be fried nuggets draped with nori seaweed and accompanied by a soy sauce and seaweed dip.

Weirdness aside, the important question is: how does it actually taste? “Embarrassingly delicious,” says SoraNews24.

But in case you’re feeling like it’s all getting disappointingly normal, “it also came with two commemorative packs of tissues, one honouring this current flavour and the other a poignant look back to when they sold girl’s foot flavour”.

All three promotions have been carried out in partnership with Kamen Joshi, a girl group who perform in hockey masks.

In January this year, the chain offered “girl’s feet” sauce based on a pungent fermented soy bean paste called natto.

Meanwhile, “girl’s sweat” sauce, unveiled in August last year, used a salt, lemon juice, and cheese to evoke “the ‘refreshing’ sweat excreted by young ladies working hard to become successful idol singers”, Asia One reported at the time.

Vice’s Justin Caffier was not impressed with the result, writing that the sauce “tiptoed right up to the line of nauseating the customer without sending them into an ipecac fit”.