Zev’s Top 10: Sapporo

Hey dudes!  I know, it’s been a while since my last Top 10 post: exactly 346 days going back to my European Top 10 when it was originally published on ripcityramblers.wordpress.com.

But the important thing is that I’M BACK, with new delectable food from Japan’s Northern Capital.  So without further ado, please enjoy these 10 foods of Sapporo placed in random order (because it is just too hard to rank them all).

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1. 串鳥 – Kushidori

Kushidori is a chain of popular yakitori (grilled meat on skewers, mostly chicken) restaurants in Sapporo.  I frequented the one by our apartment twice – once with Jo and Maya, and once with Doug and (my cousin) Leo for a late night snack after the local Fighters baseball game.

Here, the smoke from the grill mingles with the smoke from your neighbor’s cigarette, but it’s all good because the food is the bomb.  And what’s an authentic Japanese restaurant without plumes of smoke wafting in your face…

As soon as you sit down, a waiter arrives and instead of pouring you water, they pour you cups of steaming hot broth.  The exact flavor is hard to pinpoint, but it is definitely chicken-based with a peppery kick.  As you drink your broth, you order some skewers, and the best skewers (in my opinion) are:

• Pork with leek
• Mochi wrapped in bacon
• Chicken skin
• Rolled pork with shiso
• Chicken sausage with ume sauce, sprinkled with shiso

It’s astoundingly delicious.

2. 幾丼 – Ikuradon

Ikura is the Japanese term for salmon roe, and the best ikura is found in Hokkaido at the famous Nijo Market.  The Nijo Market is a blend of shopkeepers selling their fresh catches, and restaurateurs selling those fresh catches in edible form.  A lot goes on in this little market.  For example, we saw the tiniest sushi bar with just three stools and we saw more amusing cutouts for inserting your face into.

I visited the same restaurant here twice, once with just Jo and Maya, and once as a big group.  The restaurant is called 大磯 (Ohiso) and both times I devoured piping-hot bowls of rice with fresh chilled seafood on top.  On my first visit, I sampled what you see below.

On my second visit, I splurged on a more luxurious option:

My favorite thing about this meal was that it is so simple.  With a dish as simple as fresh raw seafood and rice, there are no elaborate sauces or seasonings needed to hide lower quality ingredients.  That’s the way it should be, especially with seafood!

3. えんま焼きそば – Enma Yakisoba

There’s a small town an hour’s drive from Sapporo that is abundant in natural sulfuric hot springs and onsens called Noboribetsu.  It’s also abundant in it’s regional specialty – enma yakisoba.  And from what the locals told us, the best place to get this enma yakisoba is a smoke-filled restaurant called Tokiya.

Tokiya – the site of one of the worst enma yakisoba massacres in living memory.

For those who don’t know, “yakisoba” literally means “fried noodle” – and that’s exactly what it is.  Instead of your usual yakisoba – a ramen-like noodle fried on a flat top grill and flavored with a thick brown sauce and toppings – we encountered something entirely different.

Although this dish is still called “yakisoba”, the only similarity between it and regular yakisoba is that both are fried noodles.  Instead of a thick heavy brown sauce, this dish has a lighter sesame sauce.  The vegetables were less cooked, so they have more of a crunch.  Additionally, the noodles were spicy, which is unusual in Japanese cuisine.

The reason why spice is unusual in Japanese cuisine is simply a matter of supply.  Japan has no native spices (with the exception of wasabi, which in its true form is only slightly spicy.  If this contradicts your experience, it’s because most of the wasabi in America is actually regular horseradish with green dye.)  Furthermore, because Japan shut itself off from the outside world just as worldwide trade was taking off, spices weren’t being imported and so a lot of Japanese food still lacks spice.

This is why it was such a delight to encounter this spicy, sesame-y take on yakisoba.  Spicy noodles surely fit with Noboribetsu’s theme: spicy water (hot springs), spicy people (the oni that are rumored to populate the hills surrounding Noboribetsu), and spicy noodles.

4. なべ – Nabe

Nabe is a quintessential Japanese winter dish.  However, you can get it year-round in Sapporo because it is practically winter year-round.  My first encounter with nabe is a funny story.  One night, Maya, Jo, and I visited an izakaya that our Airbnb host recommended.  The menu was entirely Japanese with the occasional picture.  I ordered what I thought was a basket of sashimi.  When our waitress (the entire restaurant was run by an old couple – he cooked and she served) plunked down a portable stove and a large ceramic bowl full of something, I realized that I did not order sashimi.  Ooops!

Our dear old waitress delivered to us a few ceramic bowls full of sesame seeds and a wooden pestle.  We were instructed to grind the fresh sesame seeds, without really knowing why.

Once the ceramic pot began to boil, our old lady waitress took the lid off to reveal…

We ladled said stew (AKA nabe) into our bowls full of freshly-ground sesame seeds, and dug in.  It was delicious.  The seafood and vegetables were cooked to perfection – tender and absorbent of the broth.  As for the broth itself, it was out of this world, especially with the fresh sesame addition. We are now on the hunt for a sesame grinder because I declare sesame seeds should not be eaten any other way.

5. 7-Eleven’s ザンギー (Zangi)

As you know by now, I am a passionate member of The Church of Japanese 7-Eleven, as evidenced by my previous works: The 7-Eleven Challenge and Ito-Yokadelicious.  But now I’d like to focus on one of their specific products: zangi (Japanese-style fried chicken on a stick).

The skin is always crispy and warm, but the real flavor is in the meat.  With all Japanese fried chicken, the meat is marinated in a delicious blend of garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and cooking sake.  This gives the chicken its exclusive flavor.  This is a go-to item for a snack from 7-Eleven and one of my new favorites.

6. コーンバターラーメン – Corn Butter Ramen

I discussed Sapporo’s ramen at length when I visited Ramen Alley for the first time, and had a bowl of simple miso ramen which was yummy, but simple.  I vowed that I would order differently next time.

When that next time arrived, I wasted no time in ordering Sapporo’s specialty ramen: miso corn butter ramen.  I know it sounds weird but trust me, it works.  The butter comes from Hokkaido’s many dairy cows, and the corn is Hokkaido’s famous sweet corn.  All together in a bowl of miso broth topped with a slice of pork belly: one word – delicious.

The butter melts in your broth, making it rich and fatty, and the corn gives a sweet crunch – all the flavors blend together in a beautiful symphony of flavors.

7. 花丸寿司- Hanamaru Sushi

Just as in America, 回転寿司 (conveyor-belt sushi) is very popular in Japan.  For locals and tourists alike, it’s a known fact that the best place to get conveyor-belt sushi in Sapporo is at a Sapporo train station restaurant called Hanamaru.

You can tell that the restaurant is tasty just by looking at the hour+-long wait that is always out front no matter what time of day.  So you take a number, and then shnor around the nearby shops for at least an hour (to Maya and Jo’s delight and to my chagrin) until your booth is ready.  Once they seat you, you are instantly surrounded by waiters yelling out orders, and chefs yelling back.  It’s difficult to tell what’s what as the sushi revolves around the restaurant, but we grab things and jam them into our faces anyway.

Also at Hanamaru, Jo made me try uni (sea urchin).  It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be though it kind of tasted like wet sand and looks like baby diarrhea.

8. ごつぼ – Gotsubo

The area of Sapporo where we live is called Susukino – with over 3,500 restaurants in this one neighborhood.  Some are smaller than my bedroom at home, like this tiny shack that sells grilled oysters.  The inside has 5 seats so it was just us and some old Japanese dude.  But the stand opens on to the street so people eat out front as well.

We racked up a $50 dollar bill, but not before having large oysters, small oysters, raw ones, and grilled ones.  We also had grilled hokigai (surf clam).  The food here crushes!

Later, we found out that TripAdvisor ranked this little shack the #2 place to eat in all of Sapporo.  Who knew?

9. まぜそば – Mazesoba

Much of the names for Japanese food are very literal – for example ‘yakitori’.  “Yaki” means “cook” and “tori” means “bird”.  In this case, “maze” means ‘to mix”.  So mazesoba is a soba dish that is mixed – specifically, you mix minced pork, onions, a raw egg yolk, and other goodies with hot soba.

Just like with carbonara, the hot noodles cook the raw egg, and make it amazing.  It reminds me of a Chinese noodle dish that I had in Kuala Lumpur (read about here) called chili pan mee.  This is unlike any Japanese food that I have ever encountered which makes Zev very happy.  I love how you season your noodles to your liking with vinegar and chili oil.  And once you finish your noodles, you dump rice with a shmear of umeboshi paste into your bowl to mop up the leftover sauce at the bottom.  Oishikatta!

10. Kinotoya Cheese Tarts

A little-known fact about Japan is that their pastry game is cold (or really good to those of you unhip to urban lingo).  One of Sapporo’s baked specialties is their cheese tarts and the very very best ones are from a bakery called Kinotoya.

These cheese tarts are a whirlwind of textures and flavors akin to the absolute best cheesecake you’ve ever experienced.  The crispy outside crust contrasts with the hot gooey interior.  The inside, made from three different kind of Hokkaido cheeses, tastes like a cross between custard and cream cheese.  The most dangerous part about these tarts is that there seems to be one of these bakeries on every block.

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The food in Sapporo is an interesting cross between things I have already eaten and things that were totally new to me.  Stay tuned for my next Top 10, coming to you from a place where everything will be totally new to me: Taipei.