Sapporo Autumn Fest is actually a lot of people's favourite festival in Sapporo it turns out. In the winter the central stretch of Odori Park is turned into the Snow Festival, and in the summer it turns into an endless sea of drunk people for Beer Garden. I love them both, but not everyone does, and it seems a bunch of people I've spoken too much prefer the relatively young Autumn Festival, which is all about food.
Sapporo Autumn Festival has been held every Autumn since 2008, and yes, the had "since 2008" written on the poster in 2008. That's just how they roll here. It's been getting bigger every year, and that's good for the variety of food on offer, but bad if you don't like crowds, or spending a long time waiting to buy food from a stall.
Oh, by the way, this year's Autumn Fest us still going on - but only until tomorrow, October 2nd. So you have a chance to check it out... but not much of a chance.
This years Autumn Fest takes up five blocks, each one having a different theme. There's a welcome area, a block for ramen and new food from all over Hokkaido, a block for restaurants from Sapporo itself to have stalls, one for wine and... classier things, and probably the best one - other food from all around Hokkaido. The new food area has been rotating dishes and I think the food there is part of a competition, but it's expensive and has an annoying ticket-based system. The other area for local Hokkaido foods is more of a farmers' market affair and I had good food from there without having to queue much at all.
Hokkaido is famous for good food, Hokkaido people are proud of their produce and it's really a no brainer to have a food festival right in the middle of town. It's well worth checking out - uh, if not this year then next!
I think this app thing is just going to dump all my photos down at the bottom in a jumble, so I'll just tell you what I ate and you can work out for yourself what's what, ok? I had amazing buta-don (pork rice bowl) from Obihiro, which is apparently famous for the stuff. I had a menchi-katsu (minced meat cutlet) burger from Eniwa that was pretty good, and an amazing jumbo scallop burger (pictured both pre and post bite) that kind of blew my mind. There's also a deer-cutlet curry there that came with a free carrot! Other things I tried that aren't pictured included potato and crab balls, sausages, sea-urchin rice and sea food curry.
I went quite a lot.
So, another great festival in Sapporo and yet more great food. Can't say fairer than that.
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