Sapporo Food: Beans Happy Home-made Meat Pies

NO! No you did not read that wrong! A meat pie shop in Sapporo, Japan where most people take their pie cues from the USA where pies are all sweet and stuff. Sigh. For Brits and Antipodeans this is an injustice that has gone too long unchallenged.

Beans Happy is a little take-away/eat-in Pie shop that opened up very recently (read: last week) near Nishi 18 Chome station on the Tozai line of the underground. Long story short: it's pretty good. They say they do Australian-style meat pies, although I don't know if any foreigners are involved in the place, and it's not really going to satisfy you if you're after big hearty meat pies like they do back home. It's located in an area with lots of small, fancy cafes and plenty of affluent families so bear that in mind - it's not really aimed at ex-pats who miss meat pies. It was good though, and I thought that the basic meat pies (of which I had two, didn't have a chance to try anything else yet) tasted like meat pies do back in England, and what more can you ask?

They even put a dollop of tomato sauce there on the side without me asking. That shows some fine cultural understanding from my point of view. The pies aren't huge, but they're only 300 something yen each so I thought they were just fine for the money. Gravy and minced meat filling. The pasty and filling are good, nothing earth-shattering, but better than the pretty crappy pie I had when I was in Sydney recently.

I went in the second day they were open on my lunch break and they had a sign up on the door saying they'd already sold out of all the pies they'd made that morning. I stuck my head in and asked and it turned out they'd just finished a batch of the regular meat pies, so I lucked out and got two piping hot from the oven. The place was quiet when I went in, but I'm guessing it's been pretty busy at peak times, and a friend of mine had a pretty terrible experience. He actually went there the first day they opened, ordered seven pies to take out and when he got home found that they'd only given him four. And they were all completely different from those he ordered. By the time he got back to the store they'd sold out so they could only refund him, but even that was a trial (by his account) so it sounds that they're going through some teething problems while they work out some regular routine. Perhaps bear that in mind, though I'm sure they'll iron things out. They're only a week old after all!

I'll put it on my map. It's between Nishi 18 Station and Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art so it's not that hard to find. I also found this page from the company that did all their designs, which are really pretty cool.