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.

Sapporo Food: Spicy Soup Curry Legon

First! If you check this blog sometimes then I'm sorry for the lack of posts. Explanations will be forthcoming at some point or another.

Second! Let's get back to the soup curry!

Spicy Soup Curry Legon was recommended to me by a commenter a while back and checking the place on the web I found a few favourable English language comments. However it is absolutely nowhere near where I live, so it took me forever to actually make the trip out there. It was worth it though!

Legon's soup was really nice, and pretty unique. The closest place to it that I can think of would be Gombei Spice, since they both have pretty strong, forceful curry flavours and a consistency where you can almost feel the spices on your tongue. I'd say Legon was more delicious, but then Gombei Spice isn't for everyone anyway.

I had the buta kakuni (slow cooked pork) with extra chicken meat-ball topping. Yuki had the chicken meat-ball soup, which was why I got the topping: to stop myself stealing any of hers. There's a lot more on their menu that I'd like to try too, some really nice looking chicken and a melty-cheese-egg topping that looks pretty special. I hope we can head back soon to try those too.

The kakuni was great, really soft and delicious, and the meatballs were good too. The vegetables were well cooked, which is always important for me, and overall I have no hesitation in recommending the place to anyone who happens to be in the area. Which is at the Western end of the Tozai line... so, perhaps it'd be better to say that it's worth a trip? It is, and thanks to whoever recommended the place to me! That said, it was delicious and I had a great meal, but it doesn't replace any of my favourite Soup Curry shops in my affections. Bearing in mind that I reckon the idea of a 'best' soup curry place is pretty stupid, this place would be top ten if I were inclined to making lists. Which I ain't!

I'll mark it on my map. We drove there, but it must be about ten minutes walk from Miyanosawa station at the end of the Tozai line.

Sapporo Food: Voyage Soup Curry

Ok! It's the holidays and I am finally on holiday. Therefore I should be able to find the time to post something, right? Well here is something, and this something is long overdue.

Soup curry, that glorious and uniquely Sapporo fusion of 'curry' and 'soup' is a great love of mine. That said I know a lot of really great soup curry places but I wouldn't go so far as to label any of them 'the best'. No one soup curry place is exactly like any other and subjectivity has a huge part to play, as you can see from some old comments I got saying they didn't like the place I liked, and recommending a couple of places that I really want to go to, but still haven't been able to since I neither live, nor work, anywhere near them.

The best soup curry I can remember having was at Lavi Lavi in Kita 24 Jo, but it was their monthly special and so it was gone almost as soon as I found it. After that I found Lavi Lavi to be a great place, but one day I went and it just wasn't as good for some reason, and it's never reached the heights it used to since. Oh, but the new branch in Sapporo Station's ESTA mall is a really convenient place to get a decent dish.

So soup curry shops vary wildly in quality, style and reliability, but the place that I would recommend to pretty much anybody is Voyage in Kita 24 Jo.

I'm sorry, soup calyi, my mistake.

Voyage is run by the same people that run Xysa nearby and Picante, which has a couple of locations now. All three are similar I think, but not exactly the same, and I like Voyage, possibly because I've been there much more often.

The food at voyage is great, and it seems to be consistently great. I've never had a lousy curry there, and I always leave glad that I made the trip. Their vegetables and meat are delicious and well cooked (something which seems a little hit and miss with some places) and they don't skimp on the veggies too, which is something I'm always happy to see. You can always choose a basic soup or a rich soup (the rich soup varies by day of the week too, just to keep things interesting) and both are delicious. It costs more to take your curry above spice level 2, but spice level 2 seems just perfect so I never bother. Add to this the tremendous toppings they do and while Voyage might not be the best I really find it hard to believe anyone would be disappointed to go there.

Oh look! Photos!

Crunchy herb chicken with  fried gyoza and potato dumpling with cheese toppings. That potato and cheese thing... oh my God.

Herb Lamb with... um, the same toppings.

Basic vegetable with just the gyoza topping. They also do a deluxe vegetable curry just crammed with stuff.

The menu at Voyage seems to change pretty regularly, but some things, like the crunchy herb chicken above are always there. Voyage soups are served in these unique bowls with this big raised section in the middle. You can't see them in those photos but imagine that the actual soup is in a donut shaped section, while the middle acts like a kind of table for you to cut things up on. It's interesting, and pretty useful when you get used to it. A cynical man might say it makes it look like you get more than you do, but I am not that man, and I always leave sated so I have no complaints.

I'll say it again, I'm not promising that Voyage will blow you away but in my experience it is always very, very good. I've been meaning to blog about it ever since I started this thing and it comes strongly recommended. It's a three or four minute walk from Kita 24 Jo station on the Namboku line of the subway, and I've marked it on my map.

Sapporo Food: Soup Curry Yellow

Yellow is a very cool, popular soup curry place in Odori that's been around for a long time. I wasn't all that impressed by the soup actually, but I really should go back and check it out again since there's a lot to like.

I say cool because the place has its own DJ booth and is decked out with record sleeves from Sapporo's kings of underground hip-hop Tha Blue Herb. They even have a curry named for them, which is pretty awesome. In fact, I don't really need to tell you because they have a kind of inside-the-store google view thing linked from their site! Check it out!

And they serve this local brew that I'd never heard of and that wasn't half bad.

I really want to give the place another chance because it's popular and it's been around for a while, but I didn't really dig either the soup or the vegetables that much. The giant slice of 'bacon' that I had in mine though - that was amazing.

I'm sure the place is worth checking out, but I wouldn't recommend it yet. I often say that opinions on soup curry are far more subjective than about many other foods. People often don't like places that I love and vice versa (I actually decided to write about Yellow rather than another place that a friend asked me to go to but that I thought basically sucked). If I go back and it's great then I'll update and let you all know for sure. If it's not... well I guess I'll do that too.

It's on my map! And you should probably check it out and make up your own mind since you can never have too much soup curry.

Sapporo Cafes: Musica Hall Cafe

Musica Hall Cafe is a very cool little place in Odori. They put on a lot of little indie acoustic nights there I think, and while I've never been to one of those it's a great place for coffee or lunch too.

It's on the third floor of this old building, but you should see the sign outside just fine. These snaps are from a while ago, but I've been there pretty regularly since and it never changes (except for the little art installations on the walls). They have a nice, pretty cheap daily lunch deal which can look something like this:

And they have a full menu too, which has things like this:

I like the place. The coffee's pretty good, it's not too expensive and fancy and it's nice and central. I'll put it on my map so do feel free to check it out.

Sapporo Cafes: Cafe Rosso

I don't really review restaurants and cafes here, I just slap up places I like so that other people know about them. That means that I go to some places that I don't think are all that great and so I don't write about them, because - hey, if you've got nothing nice to say then... y'know. I guess a couple of times I've been tempted to write something telling people to steer clear of a place, but nowhere has ever maddened me enough to actually try and harm their business. Oh! Do you know what? Scratch that. In Tokyo recently I went to Pancake Days in Harajuku, and despite us being the fourth table or so to be seated when the place opened it took them a good 20 minutes to take our order, then over an hour TO MAKE US PANCAKES. The place was busy, sure but the staff were dopey and when the pancakes FINALLY came they really weren't that impressive at all. If you're a popular pancake place in the middle of Harajuku I would think at the very least you'd have your shit together. We only went there because just looking at the line for Eggs and Things crushed my soul, but Pancake Days wasn't much better. So fuck that place.

Phew.

So anyway I was on the fence about writing about Cafe Rosso because I wasn't sure I liked the place. Cons: it's expensive (around 900yen a dish for food, drinks 500yen and only a 100yen off that with the drink set) and the guy who ran the place didn't seem all that happy to see us. Which is to say he was kind of rude. Rudeness in Japan can be measured on a totally different scale to rudeness in the UK of course, and to be honest we're pretty spoiled here. He wasn't rude as such, but he wasn't exactly welcoming.

(An aside: on the way to Rosso we went past another coffee shop whose name I've forgotten, but where our waitress was even ruder than this guy. Maybe it's something to do with being near Sapporo Factory Mall.)

Pros: it's in a great old looking building and it's a really stylish place with an odd mash-up of decor. Oh and, the biggest pro - the food was fantastic and the coffee was great. So yeah, I thought, I can recommend this place.

Rosso is just around the corner from the big Sapporo Factory shopping mall (not the museum site, which is next to the Ario shopping mall). The closest stop on the subway would be Bus Center Mae, but it's not a long walk from Sapporo Station either.

The decor mash-up I mentioned above is about forty percent fishing to forty percent tattoos to twenty percent general retro styling. The counter has a massive array of fishing reels while up on the wall are some leather jackets and tattoo flash. A sign on the counter warns that the place is protected by a 'tattooed bad ass' and the dude did have a lot of tattoos. Perhaps the coolness I felt was his general demeanour - I mean, the cafe was fare more manly than most coffee shops, and I would hardly expect the proprietor of a place like this to be all smiles.

A word on the counter as well: they have a gorgeous, gorgeous wooden counter. That is all. I could've run my hand up and down that thing all day.

I got the kakuni (slow-cooked pork) curry, and it was great.

Good meat, good vegetables, great Japanese-style curry. Yuki had a tomato and eggplant pasta that was also wonderful. The sesame bread you can see at the back there was exceptional.

The coffees after were really good too, so for sheer quality I really recommend the place. Also it's a fun place to sit and look around, and if you like Japanese fishing manga he has a lot of those up on his shelves.

Details!

Cafe Rosso

札幌市中央区北３条東３丁目１番地　福山石油ビル１階

Sapporo-shi, Chuo-ku, Kita 3 Jo, Higashi 3 Chome (North 3, East 3)

Open 11am til whenever and closed on Wednesdays!

And of course, onto the map it goes.

Sapporo Food: Soup Curry King

Soup Curry King is a popular place. It's not all that small a restaurant, but when I went in there for lunch I was lucky to get a seat, and people were arriving all the time and having to wait, or simply being turned away. And that was in the middle of a blizzard!

It looks like Soup Curry King hasn't been open all that long in the grander scheme of things (thinking geologically perhaps, it only opened in 2007) but a lot of people seem to like it. I've seen it mentioned in various places, and last year at Autumn Fest (the big foodie festival in Odori park) they had a special soup curry stand with a rotating line-up that featured King several times. That, and of course the swinging door this freezing lunchtime speaks for itself.

I got the lamb and vegetable curry, and I could taste straight away why the place is so popular.

It's a very light-looking soup, but the flavour was smooth and very satisfying. It's always tough to really nail down the differences between soup curry places in writing, but the soups really are so distinct once you've tried a few. King's soup was a little oily, but a really nice consistency - not too thick and not too thin. The spice levels are named, cutely, after a suit of cards (up through Jack, Queen, King to Joker) and I got a number 4, which the menu called your basic hot taste. 3 is recommended but I could have gone hotter than 4, and others will be able to take a lot more.

The vegetables were vegetables, nice but I've had sensational vegetables at other soup curry places so this wasn't the best. The lamb however, was sensational - so soft and juicy. You can't really see it in the picture there since it was buried under the veg, but there was plenty of it and it was great.

Soup Curry King is near Minami Hiragishi station on the Namboku line, and it's well worth a visit. It reminded me of Medicine Man, another really popular soup curry restaurant with the quality to support its reputation.

I'll mark it on my map, of course, and here's the address and opening times coz I'm nice like that:

Soup Curry King

札幌市豊平区平岸3条16丁目1-1

Open for lunch 11.30am to 3pm.

Dinner is 5pm to 11pm (last order at 10.30pm).

Saturdays, Sundays and holidays it's open 11.30am to 10pm all day (last order at 9.30pm).

And it doesn't have any regular closed days.

Sapporo Food: Maruyama DRiLL

I guess I was thinking about burgers a lot recently or something because when I realised I had a couple of hours free to go somewhere interesting for lunch I remembered Maruyama DRiLL. I tried to go there a while back, but although  their schedule said they ought to have been open, they were closed. It's no big deal, that kind of thing tends to happen with small, independent places in Japan, but I never got around to going back. Today, I half expected it to be closed too, but while it was freezing bloody cold outside, it was toasty warm inside.

That's the freezing cold exterior. It was only walking up the stairs that I deciphered the logo, which I'd seen a bunch of times before: the circle = maru; the triangle is a mountain = yama; and the triangle with lines is a drill. Obviously! I didn't snap any photos of the actual cafe inside, but I really should have since it's a super-stylish place. If you head to the website, you can check out plenty of snaps, of both the bar and the lovely staff. Here instead, just imagine a stylish bar arranged around this gorgeous burger.

The menu here looks really good, and I really want to go back and try some different things. Their main things are burgers and curries, both of which look great. It also looks like they recently added pasta to the lunch menu as well. I'd like to say it was hard for me to choose, but really if a place says they do good burgers then 99% of the time that's what I'm going to get. I chose a cheeseburger, and the plate up there was 800yen (I got the orange juice lurking in the background for an extra 150yen). They've got a pretty big range of burgers, nothing too revolutionary, but they did have a ridiculous looking triple-decker for about 1800yen. Considering that this was a tall burger to start with I can't imagine how that stays upright but still. You can add extra patties as a topping too actually.

It was a good burger. The patty especially; I'm not sure if it was 100% beef but it was juicy and delicious. Again, not the best in Sapporo, but worth your time if you're a burger fan and of course a cut above your average fast-food joint. I'll definitely be going back there, and even though I'll try and be strong, try and break my mold... I'll probably just end up getting a burger again.

It's about two minutes from exit 1 of Maruyama Kouen station, and I'll mark it on my map.

maruyama DRiLL
北海道札幌市中央区北1条西27丁目1-7 2F
Lunch is from 11.30 to 4.00 (last order at 3pm)
Dinner is from 5.00 to midnight (last order at 11pm)
And now I notice that they don't have any fixed days off, hence I was disappointed the first time I went. Might be worth phoning ahead? Think on't.

Sapporo Cafes: Sarou Houmura

I half-expected Sarou Houmura, a wonderful cafe and gallery in North-East Sapporo, to be in some secluded little glade outside the city. In fact it's about ten minutes from Kanjodori Higashi subway station, in a perfectly normal suburban neighbourhood. The smart architecture of the place though is such that inside you completely forget about the mundane surroundings. Even walking up to the place from the direction of the station it looks just like a pair of anonymous warehouses, and you have to be right on top of the place before you realise what it is.

It's those windows that are the genius point. By setting them all around the cafe part of the building the designer has let plenty of natural light shine in so you don't feel completely cut off from the outside world. At the same time, all you can see is the garden immediately surrounding Houmura, not the more bland buildings of the neighbourhood. It creates the fascinating illusion that you are somewhere far more remote than, in reality, you are. The entrance adds to this feeling as well, that long, winding, high-walled ramp cuts you off from the outside world even before you enter the cafe.

And once you're inside, the cafe part of Sarou Houmura is just the kind of perfect, super-stylish cafe that you can absolutely lose yourself in.

I loved the tables here. I have an unhealthy love of broad, heavy wooden tables, and the ones in Houmura felt like solid, immovable slabs - there for the duration. The chairs too were, I'm pretty confident, the heaviest damn chairs I've ever dealt with in a cafe situation. Holy crap, thank God they were so comfy, because once you were ensconced in one, you couldn't really shuffle it to a more comfortable position. You can probably tell that the whole place was perfectly designed on every level. The toilet was one of those hybrid lavatory/zen retreat deals. Incredible.

All of which is down to the place being owned and run by an artist, Mrs. Houmura, who we recognised from photos as we were browsing around the place after we ate. Connected to the cafe is a gallery space which was showing a range of art by different artists from a local studio when we went. Art is clearly at the heart of Houmura, and there's another building - Shinajina Houmura - just around the corner. That place may be closed for now though, since it looked a little deserted when we walked past. It looks just as cool as the one we went to though, but in a completely different way (there are lots of great photos on the site I linked to, so check it out).

We got a lunch set, ginger pork and lots of great Japanese dishes for 1200 yen including coffee afterwards.

Everything was great, those pickled beansprouts at the top especially, and it was very, very healthy. They do just coffee and drinks too of course, and a 900yen cake set that we saw a bunch of people order, and which seemed to be served on a tile. Painfully cool, which is all the better since the place is run by a little old lady.

I'll mark the place on my map, of course. Like I said it's close to Kanjodori Higashi station on the Toho line, and there's a clear map on the website too.


茶廊法邑（さろうほうむら）

札幌市東区本町1条1丁目8-27

It's open from 10am to 6pm and closed on Tuesdays.

If cool cafes are your thing it's definitely worth a trip, and it's always nice to find interesting things on the Toho line because, I'll be honest, I don't know many. Perhaps I should challenge myself to find some more.

Sapporo Food: H's Cafe

Just starting to write about a restaurant in Sapporo that does burgers started me on an internet search for Kitchen Yonoji+Jr. which was one of my favourite places in Sapporo. What happened to that place? I think it just closed down, and I miss it, but I just found an address and I'm not sure if it's the original address or... maybe I'll check it out... Oh, it's the original address. Yup, looks like that place is gone.

Anyway, H's Cafe is a cafe/bar kinda place in Susukino that opened up in October last year, and I was pretty impressed when I went there.

On the boards outside they make their burgers sound like their big thing, and they were good, but they have a variety of other stuff on their menu too. Other stuff that I studiously ignored because when a place looks like it has good burgers, that's probably what I'm going to get.

Oh, we got onion rings too, and they were really good! And interestingly served!

Actually one of the great thing about H's Cafe is that everything is really very reasonable. The beer is cheap, and when I saw how cheap the burgers were on the menu (400 or 500yen) I thought that they'd be some kind of mini, bar-snack sized affair. Luckily, I was very wrong.

That's the ABC burger, (Avocado, Barbecue, Cheese) and the NBA burger (Native Big American I think it was...). The former was 400yen, the big double was 500yen. The fries came with. Man, I don't know about you, but for a decent burger at a bar in Japan that seems pretty great to me. That NBA burger is pretty damn big. Let's have a close-up of that bad boy shall we, since the patties are shrouded in shadow there...

I say thee yay! And they were good burgers! Not the best in Sapporo, but greasy and sloppy and satisfying and we left the place stuffed and a little drunk for really not much money. If you want burgers and beer in Susukino, or if you just have a hankering for 'American' decor and a giant Budweiser banner then you really ought to check it out. They have Mountain Dew, which - I've never really understood, but there you go.

H's Cafe is really near Susukino station, just over the road from the Susukino Mister Donut branch, and I have, of course, marked it on my map. Hey! Why don't I give you some address and opening times details too?

H's Cafe
〒064-0804 北海道札幌市中央区南4条西2 ホシビル1F
That's South 4, West 2, Hoshi Bld. 1F

And their opening hours are, quite awesomely:
Mon-Sat 6pm-6am
Sunday 6pm-Midnight.

Man, now I want to go eat burgers at four in the morning. Oh, who am I kidding, that'll probably happen.

Sapporo Food: Yakumo Goma-soba

I try to avoid writing about chains of restaurants here. I figure that you hardly need me to tell you that there are a bunch of McDonald's or Starbucks or Tully's Coffees in Sapporo. But then I'm never sure whether or not to put up some stuff about the local Sapporo and Hokkaido chains like the yaki-tori chain Kushidori or (and this one I'll never bother with) the hamburg steak chain Bikkuri Donkey. If you live here then these places are so common that it'll seem pointless detailing them, but if you're only visiting then knowing about places you can eat pretty well for not much money could be really useful. AND SO - I decided to do a post about the soba restaurant chain Yakumo.

There are Yakumo's all over the place in Sapporo and they're all a little different but they all do very nice soba. Soba has always been one of my favourite Japanese foods - buckwheat noodles that can be served cold or hot and eaten in a few different ways. I'd guess the most common way that soba is eaten though, is cold. You get a tray of soba noodles, some soba sauce to dip the noodles in and often some tempura to go with them. It's great, and healthy and I love it.

I sometimes go to the Yakumo in the basement of 4chome Plaza next to Odori station, because it's conveniently on my way home sometimes, and I sometimes go to the one in the PASEO section of Sapporo station for the same reason, but mostly I go to the pretty fancy one on the top floor of the department store PARCO. So let's talk about that one, huh?

What sets Yakumo apart from other soba places is that they serve goma-soba, that is they use sesame in their noodles. What does this look like? Little black bits in the grey noodles. What does it mean for the taste? Ehhh, I'm not sure. It's subtle. They're a little harder? Anyway they're delicious. Every now and then they've told me that they're serving 'Shin-soba' that day, which means not goma-soba, but the noodles are still great. They're also a Hokkaido company which means lot's of Hokkaido sourced ingredients and Hokkaido big-upping in their menu.

Here's what my girlfriend got the day I took these snaps. I think it was torori soba? The bowl at the top right has a raw egg and a bowl of grated mountain potato - very sticky. That's not really standard, but the noodles here are presented in a really standard way. The bottle has the soba sauce and in this case she added that to the egg bowl, then added the spring onion and wasabi (to taste, as they say) and picked up the noodles and dipped them in the mixture. I think. Man, I don't want to sound patronizing about this, but God knows I've been a bit baffled by the bowls and bottles presented to me at soba restaurants.

And here's what I get most of the time when I go there: ebi oroshi soba. This particular Yakumo has a great evening meal deal where you can choose one of six main dishes to go with a few side dishes for 980yen, and you can add a beer for 380yen more.

So, let me explain what's going on here. The soup from the bottle in the middle goes into the bowl and you mix in as much wasabi and spring onion as you want. Then you add the various things on top of the soba and mix those in as well, and when you can see enough of the noodles to get at them, you dip them in the soup! The tempura shrimp there also get dipped in the soup - IF YOU WANT! And there at the back, the salad and the baked rice-ball are part of the meal set. The yaki-onigiri (rice-ball) has cheese inside and is awesome.

The beer, you drink.

Oh! And last but by no means least you'll always get a pot of soba-yuu at soba restaurants. That square red pot in shadow at the back is the soba-yuu - that's the water that they cooked the noodles in. At the end of the meal, when you've finished everything else, you'll probably still have some of the soba sauce left, so you pour some of the soba-yuu into the sauce bowl to make a soup you can drink.

Isn't soba wonderful? Shhh, no need to answer. I like Yakumo, so if you're in Sapporo looking to have some soba and you see one around, it's probably not going to be a bad meal. This PARCO branch I'd say is good, especially for that evening meal deal so I'll mark it on the map.

Sapporo Food: Donabe Hamburg Hokutosei

Donabe Hamburg Hokutosei (土鍋ハンバーグ 北斗星) has a couple of location in downtown Sapporo, and judging by how crowded it seems to get every night I'd say they're probably doing pretty well. They serve hamburg steak served in an earthenware pot (the 'Donabe' part of the name) in a rich soupy sauce and when I went a while back it was really very good.

I can't guarantee those dudes with the amazing hair will be their on your visit, but this branch is pretty near Club Counteraction so they might be!

The shop is pretty small with only counter seating, so it's fun to watch the whole cooking process including the massive gouts of flame they unleash while they're cooking the hamburg.

That's only one chef, but the mirror really helped to dispel any feelings of claustrophobia in there! I'd describe the cuisine at Hokutosei as rich. Very rich. I went with the stuff that was recommended on the wall, a tomato and cheese thing with extra bacon topping, and Yuki had something else. I forget what that was but... something to do with vegetables.

The sauce is thick, the hamburg steak is juicy and delicious and that crazy, crazy thick bacon (I do not think that would be classed as bacon in England, that's like a level up - gammon or something) was amazing. Allow me to talk a moment more about the bacon - it was so thick, and so salty - man, it was like ur-bacon or something. The archetype of bacon. And eating it was such a challenge that it came with a pair of scissors to cut it into edible chunks.

Look at how thick that is! I've had thinner pork chops! If you're into strong flavours and big, hearty, meaty dishes I'd recommend the place. I'll stick the one I went to on the map, but the other one is in Tanuki Koji, on the other side of eki-mae dori. It's easy enough to find and there's always the internet, which I'm assuming is how you found me.

Sapporo Food: Hachikyou

Hokkaido! The vast Northern island of Japan where I live! And it's getting pretty bloody cold at the moment! Seriously, I was sorely unprepared for how chilly it was out there today.

Hokkaido is rightly famous for its food, both in terms of produce (a whole lot of Japan's homegrown produce comes from here) and in terms of the cuisine too. Every now and then someone comes to visit from elsewhere in Japan wanting to experience the Hokkaido food that they've heard so much about, and generally I can help them out. There's good sushi from Kushiro at Hanamaru in Sapporo Station, there's good Soup Curry everywhere, miso ramen all over the place, Jingisukan lamb barbecue (I like Daruma in Susukino)... there's a lot of stuff. But this time when some friends came we went to Hachikyou. Hachikyou is a famous Izakaya that serves the kind of Hokkaido dishes that you might not find at those more specialist restaurants I mentioned above. It's just North of Susukino Station and judging by the autographs they've got all over their walls it's pretty popular for visiting celebrities. And tourists, I should add.

Sorry for the shoddy photos this time out, it was an authentically dimly lit bar. My phone camera (such a pro-blogger, I know) had a hard time.

We tried a bunch of things, mostly with a Hokkaido bent, but I should probably cut to the chase and show you what Hachikyou is most famous for - the sukko-meshi.

That, my friends, is a whole heapin'-helpin' of salmon roe. Ikura (salmon roe) like a lot of seafood is really good and fresh in Hokkaido, and Hachikyou do this crazy Ikura-don (salmon rice-bowl) where they bring you the rice, then bring out a massive bowl of Ikura and all the staff start shouting along as one of the guys strikes and dramatic pose and starts ladling the fish eggs onto your rice until you say stop, or until it overflows. It's fun, and it was good Ikura man. OK, we split this four ways, but it might've been a bit much to get more than one.

The cool thing is that in the menu and in a speech before serving, the staff acknowledge that serving up such a crazy serving of a pretty expensive food is somewhat... gluttonous? Opulent? Anyway they tell you not to order it unless you're sure you can finish it, and also ask you to make extra donations to a charity box that goes towards protecting fish habitats (I think, I might be remembering that a little wrong).

Here's some of the other stuff we got too:

Salmon chanchan-yaki is a Hokkaido dish that's made by cooking salmon in a kind of miso dressing. This was delicious, and it's more of a home-cooked dish, so it was cool to find it at a restaurant.

These were... hoke croquets, I think? A kind of fish, again, more Hokkaido produce. They were great.

And this was crab (Hokkaido) and avocado salad. It was nice, but I think I was blown away by the other stuff more.

And sashimi too. Because, Hokkaido fish etc.

Hachikyou wasn't too expensive (even the sukko-meshi wasn't crazy, though it did cost a bit) but it was a little more than your bog-standard izakaya. To be honest, I'd say that while all of the food was very good, it wasn't astonishingly delicious, but then the place really is more about serving up great Hokkaido izakaya food than mind-blowing culinary excellence, so it does exactly what it sets out to do. It's well worth going to for anyone who's living here, or just visiting, for the sukko-meshi alone. Also, see if you can spot any famous people's autographs that you know! All Japanese of course, and I can never read kanji signatures, so I only spotted a few bands that I knew.

I have marked it upon my map, for your locating pleasure.

This week in Japanese Pepsi flavours

Oh god.

Did you just throw up in your mouth? A little bit? Man, it should be pretty obvious by now but really all these flavours that Pepsi rolls out now and then actually have nothing to do with Pepsi-cola at all. They're like flavoured soda - just weird variations on carbonated drinks with the Pepsi brand name attached.

And I cannot resist them, even when the very colour of the drink makes me feel somewhat queasy. This one was actually ok, but incredibly sweet - a very boiled-candy kind of flavour. But boy, I can still feel it coating my teeth.

Recommended if you like those swirly 'strawberries and cream' boiled sweets they used to make, or if you're a spelunker into the cave of oddball limited-edition junk foods like me.

Sapporo Food: Maruyama Mushroom

Out near Nishi 18 Chome station on the Tozai line, Maruyama Mushroom offers (according to the English slogan) hamburg steak and casual French food and despite the fact that I can't stand mushrooms I thought I'd check it out!

It's a nice, small restaurant and they're clearly very serious about their food. It's one of those places where as much of the menu is devoted to describing the ingredients and their origins, as is devoted to actually laying out the food. Most of their dishes are based around Japanese style hamburg steak, and although it's not very expensive, you can tell that you're in for something of a quality meal because it's certainly not as cheap as your bog-standard hamburg chain. The cheapest set thing is a little over a thousand yen:

And it looked very nice. I pushed the boat out a little more and had the hamburg with Parmesan risotto which was really good. Mushrooms, actually, weren't all that obvious in the dishes. Since I really don't like them I did ask - um, does this have lots of mushrooms in it? And the waitress said it did, but very quickly said that they could leave them out if I wanted. And I wanted, so they did, but I'm a little curious as to what they left them out of. The hamburg? The risotto? The salad? And for that matter I was feeling guilty because the chef is clearly very serious about his food, has called the place Mushroom and I was asking him not to include them? Well, I enjoyed it in the end, and he didn't look too put out so I hope it was ok.

If you're in the Maruyama-ish area this place is worth checking out, and it's on my map. I'm glad I got over my distaste for the name to try it!

Sapporo Food: Soup Curry Samurai

I knew that there were a bunch of branches of Soup Curry Samurai around, but I didn't know until recently that one of my friends rates it as the best place in Sapporo. Since in actuality I needed no incentive to go and check the place out, that was all the incentive I needed to finally go to the one I spotted in Susukino and see if it was any good.

It's very good.

Soup curry for beginners - curry in the form of a soup that's served with lots of meat and vegetables in the soup and with rice on the side that you can do with what you wish. It originated in Sapporo and as yet there's no massive nationwide chain, or in fact much similarity at all between the different shops. Some shops use vaguely Indian spices, while a lot of them have a hint of Indonesian or Thai flavour to them. But it's always grounded in a uniquely soup-curry taste. I can probably stop doing this spiel whenever I talk about soup curry can't I? There are some small chains with multiple shops in Sapporo and a few have even opened in Tokyo I think, but I find that sometimes flavour can vary between different branches of the same chain so I'm reluctant to review all of one company's restaurants on the basis of visiting one. Anyway, this was the Odori/Susukino Samurai I went to, accessed via street level but spread over the second and third floors of the small building it's in.

The place was nice and cozy and the soup curry was excellent. The soup was nice and thick in comparison to many other places, and it had a very full, rich flavour. Yuki had the monthly special which was this chicken pumpkin thing, pumpkin soup too!

Her comments afterwards were that she was blown away by the first six mouthfuls, but that after that it was maybe a bit too rich and there was too much chicken. I hardly need say that this won't be a problem for others. I went for the buta kakuni (slow cooked pork) which is something I really like trying everywhere. There's a choice of six curries but I had the regular and it was pretty wonderful. In fact the soup was so good, and so flavoursome that I regretted getting the mozzarella cheese topping for it since it really ended up confusing the otherwise wonderful taste. Then, choosing spice levels and toppings are part of the fun of soup curry. Next time I'll keep it simple.

I had spice level 4, the highest you can go before they start dropping chillis in and charging more, and it was nicely spicy. Nothing to worry about if you like spicy food. The vegetables here were crisper and less cooked than a lot of the places I've been too recently, and to be honest I prefer them softer than this with soup curry. But the pork was cooked to perfection, so I assume that's the way they do their veg here and some people will love it. There was certainly a nice selection as you can see.

I don't know that this is the best place in Sapporo, but to be honest considering the number of Soup Curry places out there I doubt I'll ever find that holy, curry-filled grail. It was great though, and I'd love to go back. There are four branches scattered around Sapporo that you can find from their website that I've linked to at the top, and I'll put this city centre one on my map. Ahhhh, I love soup curry.