Monday 8 November 2010

Sapporo Food: Jacksonville

Well I'm kinda late to the party on this one. After it gets shout outs on the Hokkaido Insider mailing list (twice!), in that lovely What's On In Sapporo newsletter and in Sapporo Source last year, I thought - y'know, I probably should write about the hamburger shop Jacksonville. Hell, it even got an article in the Southern Oregon Mail Tribune! All that, plus I go there pretty damn regularly already.


Now, as to why I haven't blogged about Jacksonville, a damn fine hamburger joint not ten blocks from my apartment, before - well, it's down to stupid self consciousness. I go there pretty regularly, the owner knows my face and I chat with him, so for me to whip out my camera and start taking bloody pictures of his food (something I feel I have to do if I'm going to talk about a place) seems... well a) awkward and b) bloggerish in a way that I find irritating. I like writing about things, and I like having a blog, but I'm also a big fan of not writing about things and not having a blog and just sitting back and enjoying things. Letting the moment pass unrecorded for the pointless posterity of the internet. One polaroid a day and all that. I wonder to what extent that feeling was stoked up by the guy from Hamburger RISA who told me it pisses him off when people take pictures of the burgers before they eat them.

All this by they way - nothing to do with Jacksonville, and separate entirely from those people (like my sister) who, for reasons of art or possibly insanity, take pictures of every single meal they eat. She's gonna have a helluva photo album one day.

SO ANYWAY! Most people I talk to who know places in Sapporo, now seem to know Jacksonville, which is awesome, and so I thought: "just take a picture of the burger before you enjoy it for once and write about it and then maybe more people will go." So I did:


The first time I went to Jacksonville I think I liked it, but I wasn't blown away. There could be, of course, a million reasons for this and I'm not a hundred percent sure why that was, but every time thereafter I've been thoroughly impressed with the burgers there. Good bread, good meat, good toppings... just great burgers. At the moment I'm digging the American Teriyaki Burger (teriyaki sauce and pineapple), but I try the monthly special every time (except this month which is mushrooms, which... nah...) and they're always fantastic. He does good homemade coleslaw, and good onion rings, and while the fries are the very thin, very crispy kind, I think this means they don't distract from the burger as much as they do at other places. They're good too, by the way.

It has a nice atmosphere (I really appreciated them playing Back To The Future 3 on the big TV when I had lunch there once), great food, it's not too expensive, and the guy that owns the place is incredibly friendly and speaks excellent English. It comes fully recommended, and while I can't call it my favourite burger place in Sapporo (because that's a very difficult question to answer), if you like burgers and live in Sapporo, you really have to go there.

I mark it on the map: thus. And hope that you will go and eat hamburgers there. And after this, who knows I might write about the Soup Curry and Chinese places that I go to all the time near my house too.

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