Sapporo Food: Daichi no Curry Shinta UPDATED

Let's try and ease back into this with something as painless and simple as possible.

When I want something simple and hearty to eat I've been a few times now to Daichi no Curry Shinta, for a Japanese curry and trimmings that's a little too much for me to finish. That doesn't mean much by the way, I'm sure a bigger eater could easily finish it off, but actually it's not just the size that makes it hard to finish.
EDIT! EDIT! E-E-E-EDIT! This place has closed down and is gone from Sapporo City Centre now! There's still one in Tomamu though, if you happen to be in the area! I'll leave the post up for posterity but kill the tags.

Daichi no Curry Shinta is in Tanuki Koji and is wonderfully central and easy for me to stop off at on the way home from work. It's very much a simple, sit down, eat and leave place with no tables, only bar seating. But the quality of the curry is surprising and that's what has me recommending the place. With your curry you also get a free little side salad, and a free 500ml bottle of water to wash it down, which are both nice perks. And the curry is rich.

It's really good. It's thick, a little spicy (I'd say falling at the 'dry' end of Japanese curry, not the 'sweet' end, which isn't really all that spicy anyway) and the ingredients are very nice. Up there we have the buta kaku-ni (slow cooked pork chunks) with cheese topping, and man it hit the spot. Plus you have the bonus/issue of the fresh cream. At the top you can see a lump of fresh cream cradled lovingly by a single prawn cracker. The guy explained that the idea is that if the curry is too spicy you can mix in some fresh cream and make it milder. Now the curry wasn't all that spicy at all, so I was in no hurry to make it milder, but I was certainly interested in mixing some fresh whipped cream into my curry because HELL YES I WANT TO MIX FRESH CREAM INTO MY CURRY. But it's already very rich and buttery (and this time had that cheese in there too) and adding the cream made it even richer, and of course, even less healthy.

Which didn't stop me.

In the end I couldn't finish the plate probably because of adding too much cream to my curry and making it a little too sickly, but I was full too. Shinta isn't very expensive - more expensive than your super-cheap fast food places of course, but the quality is countless times better. Worth it if you're looking for somewhere to get a quick satisfying meal in the centre of Sapporo. I'll put it on the map, shall I? Yes I think that's how this works...

Sapporo Food: Grabstri UPDATED

EDIT! UPDATE AND EDIT! Grabstri closed down. Then they demolished the building too, which is a little extreme but, well, it wasn't that great really. Don't worry about the Meer Lounge people though, they opened a new place in Susukino called PEACE with really uncomfortable stools. I'll leave this post up for posterity but kill the tags. Is that ok?

Oh boy, pretty soon every trendy, somewhat bohemian bar and restaurant in Sapporo is going to be owned by the Meer Lounge dude. I wonder if he could be described as 'shadowy'? That would be cool. Hot on the heels of World Japanese Foodin' EN, that I blogged about last year, January saw the interestingly monikered Grabstri open in Kita 24 Jyo.

I'm really not trying to plug this little chain of bars too much, honestly. I was in Kita 24 Jyo and picked up a flyer for the place, then didn't know it had anything to do with Meer Lounge or EN until we went there and saw the menu. The flyer, by the way, features their slogan - "Let's Tacos", which I would hope a lot of people will find grating (the common "Let's [NOUN]" construction of Japanese ad copy tends to grate on most native English speakers) but for me just shows how inured I've become, in that it didn't bug me that much. Also I kinda fancied Tacos, which really aren't common in Japan.

Well, turns out that much like EN, Grabstri offers a contemporary Japanese take on the dish. All the food we had was great, and I'd certainly recommend the place, but I don't think their tacos are all that taco-like in anything other than basic construction. Then, I'm English! What the hell do I know about Mexican food? Only Americans know about Mexican food. Eh, Mexicans too probably.

Grabstri is a smaller, more humble looking place than EN (though it shares a few quirks of decor), less of a restaurant, more of a bar with food, but they had a pretty big menu to choose from. The tacos (soft or deep fried) are the centre-piece, but we also had these deep fried shrimp cakes that were just incredible.

It's located really centrally to Kita 24 Jyo, about a minute from the North exit of the subway, and I've marked it on the map too! Good food, perfectly good beer and a nice feel to the place, so go check it out.

Sapporo Food: Treasures UPDATED!

UPDATE! I deleted this from the map a long time ago but I never mentioned it here. Treasures closed ages ago, saying they were going to re-open, but to the best of my knowledge they never did. Shame.

Back to the eateries:


Treasures is a hamburger shop, and since I'm on a mission to try every hamburger shop on that godsend Sapporo Burger Map leaflet it was a no-brainer to drop in here on my way back from the Library. It's small and colourful (of which I approve) and fairly cheap. You're looking at around 550yen for a burger, which probably seems expensive if you only eat McDonalds or Lotteria, but then if you only eat Lotteria or McDonalds you probably don't really like Hamburgers. In fact, you probably don't really like yourself very much.

Yeah, I'm sitting here with my arms crossed right now judging you.

Anyway the burgers aren't all that big, but they're pretty good. Possibly, y'know... too much lettuce:

...but a good unhealthy burger flavour. They have some signs up about beef, which means I guess they don't mix pork and beef here (though I can't be sure, "Teenage" Matt Longarini has a better palette for that stuff, but I'm learning). I got the Teriyaki Egg Burger, and didn't get much teriyaki out of it but did enjoy it plenty. Oh, I liked the bread, that's right. It was soft and almost too thin but better than many burger buns in Japan.

Slap! Bang! It's on the map, and it's in Odori if a little far west so check it out.