Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

It’s been over a month since we last put an entry on the blog. Time flies when life gets in the way, doesn’t it? Work, travel and other hobbies have been making much demands on our free time, and we’ve had to oblige lest we go stir crazy from lack of variety. Certainly, food is one of our interests, but we decided to take a short break from writing about cooking and eating so that we could get a new (and perhaps fresher) perspective on the kind of material to put on this blog.

Going back and reading through the entries on this blog, they could best be described as a collage of procedural articles on cooking or play-by-play descriptions of where and what we’ve eaten. And that is really quite different than how we had originally envisioned our posts to be. Christina had started this blog with the intention of sharing different out-of-the-ordinary experiences with other people. She wanted to not only describe the food, but also relate it to memories or experiences that others could identify with. This is of course easy to conceptualize but a lot harder to execute. Banging out post after post with “meaning” in relatively short order did not come easily or naturally, and we soon found ourselves falling into the habit of writing a diary about what we cooked and where we ate. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it just isn’t what we had started out to do.

Those of you who watch Top Gear will know who Jeremy Clarkson is. For those who don’t, Clarkson is an English television personality and auto journalist with a carefully cultivated polarizing personality. You either love to hate him or hate to love him. Mostly, it has to do with him being a right prat on occassion, which is pretty much in keeping with his act of being a 12-year old trapped in a 50-year-old 6′4″ body. He is also a bloody brilliant journalist. He is supposed to write about cars, but if you read his work, you will find that he does just about anything but. Most auto journalists follow a standard formula when writing an article – they describe the car, describe the features/options/prices, describe the drive, etc etc. It’s all very informative and very technical and chock full of information. In fact, it’s everything except entertaining. Clarkson on the other hand, couldn’t care less about any of the stuff the other journos get in a huff over. Sure, he might give a perfunctory description of the features in a car (usually in the context of something he finds silly), but what he mainly does is to write about the car against the backdrop of a larger, funnier metaphorical story. For instance, how could anybody relate poor eyesight to a Citroen C5? Clarkson can, nonsensical though it may be. We enjoy his humor (and studied insults) – take the following two paragraphs for example:

In two short paragraphs, he manages to slag off an English town and diss three cultures while making (rather effectively) a point about the car’s shape and quality. No, Clarkson’s not Hemingway. His articles are by no means the height of intellectually stimulating or thought-provoking writing. In fact, Clarkson’s articles are sometimes downright silly. But they are always good for a light, entertaining read.

That “entertaining” quality is something that we are working hard to capture in our future posts. No, we don’t have the comedic writing talent of Clarkson, but that’s no reason not to try. If our attempts don’t come off well, the only people suffering will be you, our readers! No skin off our backs really. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won’t, but we’re sure going to give it a whirl. Watch this space…

Christina & ET

Location: Sapporo, Japan

Author: My Husband

After our pitstop at the fish market, we headed back to Sapporo Station to do some last minute shopping. Sapporo Station seems to be the nexus of the city, the one place from which all manner of products and services flow into Sapporo. Around Sapporo Station, there are multiple department stores, countless restaurants, massive foodhalls, eletronics stores, boutiques, and many other businesses. When visiting a place new to us, we always do some of our shopping at the local grocery stores. So that afternoon found us wandering the basement foodhalls and grocery stores at Sapporo Station looking for souvenirs to take home. There were several snack items that were way to tempting to pass up, and so we bought some to eat at the hotel that afternoon.

First, we have a cream puff from the Fruitscake Factory. I did a triple take when I first saw the name because it was so Cheesecake Factory like, even down to the type of font used. But instead of being a chain restaurant like the Cheesecake Factory, Fruitscake Factory is a chain of stores selling confections. Like this cream puff for example:

It’s very much like a Beard Papa cream puff; the outside of the puff was crispy and the cream filling was very smooth, pretty sweet, and had lots of vanilla seeds in it. When it comes to cream puffs in Japan, Beard Papa certainly isn’t the only game in town.

Then there were these grapes that we had read and heard so much about. A small bunch like this was approx. CAD $10, but despite the price, we had to try it. In HK where they import Japanese produce, these grapes were selling for 2.5 times the price in Sapporo.

Ever seen a bunch of grapes wrapped up like this?

Banish all thoughts of the taste of “regular” grapes when eating these. Each seedless grape is huge and exceedingly juicy. Biting into one releases grape juice that is so sweet it is almost unreal. And each grape releases a mouthful of juice that just fills your mouth with grapy goodness. Unbelievable. Definitely worth the $10.

For some reason, Baumkuchen is very popular in Sapporo. Not sure why as we thought it was a bit dry (though very buttery).

This is a German cake, made by painstakingly building up layers of batter over a horizontal rotating spindle. The size of most baumkuchen tend to be quite substantial (approx. the size of a 6” cake with a hole in the middle), but we bought a small piece just to try. It was too dry, but decent tastewise; it was buttery and not overly sweet.

We also bought a slice of Japanese cheesecake. The packaging was a joy to behold.

To ensure that the cake didn’t move around during transport, our server folded up some thin pieces of cardboard into circles to buttress the slice of cake. One cardboard circle was used to store a spoon, while the other for paper napkins. This is why we like to buy things in Japan.

This cheesecake was different than other Japanese cheesecakes we’ve had. It was very moist and the texture very smooth. And it is also richer – almost more creamy – than the versions we find in other parts of Asia or Vancouver. Christina loved this.

Finishing up these snacks back at our hotel constituted our fourth meal of the day. By this time, we weren’t sure we could have dinner, but I told Christina we should try to give it our best shot. After all, I’d really wanted to have some sushi before heading home. At 9pm that night, we walked out to Sapporo Station yet again, this time to an outlet of Sushi Zen. We’d been told that Sushi Zen serves some of the best sushi in Sapporo, and I was determined to try it.

Sushi Zen is located on the restaurant level of Sapporo station, and was empty save for one other table of customers by the time we got there. We chose to sit at the sushi bar so that we could see the itamae work. As there weren’t many customers that evening, we had the itamae all to ourselves. He was very friendly, spoke some English, and seemed genuinely pleased to converse with us. Unlike many Japanese restaurants that prep and serve the entire sushi order on one plate, the chef at Sushi Zen madeand served one piece of sushi at a time. And as we ate it, he would proceed to make the next piece.

Each nigiri would be placed on the rectangular ceramic platter on the counter. The chef would only begin making the next nigiri only after you have finished your previous piece.

It was a joy to see the itamae work. His practiced moves, economy of motion, and elegant knifework all came together like a masterfully choreographed dance, and his creations were truly mouth-watering. Our original plan was just to have a few pieces of sushi and then call it a night. But the food that was put out by the chef was just too difficult to resist, and we ended up having a much larger dinner than we’d intended. Honestly, I have no idea how we managed to put so much food away.

The attention to detail in preparing the nigiri was very impressive. For instance, the chef removed the ingredients that were used for each individual nigiri from the refrigerated case and allowed them warm up slightly before making the sushi. If the ingredients were too cold, the true flavors of the seafood would not come through. Also, the chef painted a layer of sauce on each of the nigiri before serving it, making it such that you don’t have to dip the sushi in soy yourself.

Here’s what we had:

Hotate (scallop). The chef painted a coat of sauce over top of this before setting it on our serving plate and told us that it wasn’t necessary to put more soy on it. The sweetness of the Hokkaido scallops were astounding, and it was so fresh there was a nice, pleasing crunch when you bit into it.

Hamachi (yellowtail). This fish was nicely fatty, had a nice crunchy texture, and had just the right amount of oilyness and sweetness. This was possibly the best fish we had that evening and we ordered two rounds these for each of us.

Hotaebi (sweet prawn). There’s raw prawn and then there’s this raw prawn. My goodness, it was so sweet, and the texture so wonderfully smooth that you would think you were eating butter. It never got to be too gummy even after chewing for a while, and we really enjoyed this.

Uni (sea urchin roe). The chef used a strainer to retrieve the uni from a water-filled container, and then allowed the uni to warm up/dry on a piece of cloth befor preparing the sushi. The nigiri, unlike the other ones, was placed on a plate, and some salt was carefully sprinkled over the uni, before being served. The chef specifically told us not to dip this in soy. WOW. Enough said.

Ikura (salmon roe). Ikura must’ve been in season – that’s the only explanation I have because we’ve never had such fantastic ikura. These ones were ruby red, clear, and sparkly. When they pop in your mouth, the liquid is fresh, briny, and has a nice slightly sweet finish. We’ve never had ikura like this anywhere else in the world. These were simply fantastic, and we had four orders between the two of us.

Otoro. OMG. Look at the marbling on this piece of fish. Looks almost like a slice of steak. Totally divine.

Kinki (a small red-colored rockfish). This fish is difficult to find outside of Japan, and even in Japan, is pretty expensive. A blowtorch is taken to the skin of the fish before it is served. The slightly charred skin, along with the fatty and soft-texture of the meat, really made for great eating. Despite its delicateness, this fish was pretty oily and rich – I can see why there is a demand for it despite the price.

Squilla (mantis shrimp). This is what the Cantonese call this 攋尿蝦. I usually really like mantis shrimp because it is much sweeter than a regular prawn, but when made as a nigiri, it didn’t do much for me.

Tamago (egg). Looks more like a cake than the regular tamago nigiri, don’t you think? It was our “dessert” nigiri, and as we understand it, is usually served last to round off the meal. Best tamago we’ve had btw.

I used to say that I’ve never eaten at a truly good sushi restaurant, so I didn’t know how Vancouver sushi stacked up. Well, I think it is safe to say that I have now eaten at a pretty good sushi restaurant, and I’m sad to say that nothing I’ve eaten in Vancouver (it should be noted I haven’t been to Tojo’s, and Ajisai is our current favourite) has approached the level of quality and taste of the food at Sushi Zen. And despite the multiple orders of some of the more expensive items, the bill was not unreasonable. It was the best and most memorable sushi meal we’ve had to date. We have every intention of coming back…

Next post, airline lounges and trip roundup.

Tuesday two weeks ago at 10:30pm, after spending the entire day putting together a 103-slide deck, it was finally time for dinner. At that time of the night, the only thing that still served food was the hotel bar, and this was dinner.

Well, what is there to say? At least the waiter was a nice guy…

While meals are only one component of travel, they really illustrate the difference in mindset between work travel and leisure travel. Theoretically, there’s really no reason why one can’t eat as well when travelling on business vs leisure. A meal is a meal. At 7pm, find a restaurant, go, and eat. Easy peasy, no?

In practice however, one really never eats as well while on business, despite the expense account. Business trips are always very tight on time, filled with meetings that require extensive preparations. And because these meetings are always arranged in a just-in-time manner, that usually means preparations begin on the flight. And on the ground, late night calls are the norm, going over the numbers with the local team and discussing t’s & c’s with the global centers. And during the meetings, the politicking and maneuvering of negotiations is enough to drain one of the desire to do anything other than to head back to the hotel for a drink (or to the airport to catch a flight home…). Naturally, all these factors conspire to rob one of the appetite to eat a nice meal; your mental state is such that spending too long eating takes away from finishing up the work at hand. In fact, this is why many road warriors tend to eat very unhealthily.

Aside from the food, the work itself is usually challenging and ultimately satisfying. The feeling of winning is great – nothing feels better than giving a well-received presentation, or getting one’s way in negotiations, or coming away with a signed deal. But the eating suffers…

On vacation, hey, you’re always just waiting to your next meal. No meetings in the morning to prepare for, no late night phone calls to locales where phone connections are staticky, no colleagues asking why delivery timelines are so short, no senior executives asking if margins can be higher… in short, nothing to harsh one’s mellow!

On vacation, you pretty much have a great appetite all the time. This why when Christina and I are on holidays, we have the ability to eat things at a frequency that would make the pre-subway-diet Jared Fogle (remember him?) proud.

So, with the above preamble, we head back to Sapporo where we would begin every morning with a full breakfast. Japanese hotels do very nice breakfast buffets, with Japanese selections consisting of rice, various types of fish and meats, pickled salads, miso soup, etc. plus continental standbys such as fruits, dairy products, cereals, salads, etc. The milk, this being Sapporo, was particularly good. Hokkaido milk is truly some of the best we’ve had. (If you like your milk bland and tasteless, you might beg to differ)

On this particular day, after having breakfast, we had a pretty full itinerary ahead of us. In the morning, after breakfast, we took a public bus to the Sapporo Beer Museum. Those of you who have broken bread with me know that I like my beer, so no surprise that I would drag Christina out there. Now having spent a lot of time in Singapore, I thought I knew what clean was. But the Japanese really takes clean to the next level.

The window sills of the public bus we were on was dust free. The rest of the bus immaculately clean. And the bus driver couldn’t be a nicer chap, despite our language challenges. And that really is a microcosm of Sapporo society. Oh, interesting factoid – you don’t pay when you get on the bus, you pay before you get off.

And after a short ride, we arrived at the Beer Museum.

Sapporo beer is still brewed in Hokkaido, but outside the city. The beer museum, as we found out, was never really a brewery. It was originally a sugar mill.

The tour was self-guided, and frankly, not the most interesting one I’d been on. Having been taken on walking tours of commercial breweries in Asia, the Beer Museum was somewhat of a let down. The most interesting thing were the collection of Sapporo beer bottles through the ages, as well as the series of posters used to market the products from the 1800s to present day.

A small section of their poster wall.

The plan was to spend an hour or so here, and then head over to the Sapporo bier garten for a quick snack. We finished the tour in 30 minutes, but that didn’t stop us from heading over to the bier garten anyway.

A very rigid napkin

The place had a German vibe about it, but you don’t have to look too closely to see that it is Japanese. The place was large and very smoky – not from cigarettes, but from the all-you-can-eat BBQ lamb that they were serving.

My wife was still feeling pretty full from breakfast, so she wisely sat out this meal. Me? I got the following:

Sapporo doesn’t get much fresher than this – very close to the source. Just as I’ve had the best Heineken while in Amsterdam, I had the best Sapporo in Sapporo!

We also had lamb sausages with some pickled cabbage (not, it’s not quite sauerkraut) and Dijon mustard. The sausages were nice and greasy, a little sweet on the palette, and pleasingly gamey.

The star almost reminds one of Heineken.

Snack eaten, we bade the beer museum farewell and made our way to the fish market. On this short journey, we got to see more of Sapporo’s public transit system, which was clean, efficient, and unexpectedly inexpensive. The subway ticketing systems were very intuitive and exceedingly user-friendly, so much so that we got the hang of it within 30 seconds. The subway trains pull into the station at breakneck speeds, like so:

Subway train arriving at the station. Note the half-height safety barriers – the trains stop in such a way that their doors are aligned with the safety barrier doors.

The train interiors are spotlessly clean. Also, the Sapporo subway trains have cloth upholstered seats, which are comfy and impossibly clean. How do they keep it so?

We made two train transfers and then got off at a station that was on the outskirts of downtown. This place was a bit more industrial, yet no less clean. It was a little bit of a walk to the fish market, which isn’t really one large market. Rather, it’s a street where seafood vendors have set up shop, with quite a few vendors vying for the shoppers’ seafood dollars. We got there a little late, and many of the businesses were already washing up, preparing to shut down for the day. However, there were one or two large stores, obviously well-prepared to handle tourists, that were still going full-tilt.

A cute little pickup used for delivery. In the background, you can see the colorful signs of the seafood vendors.

We walked into one of the larger seafood stores and gawked at the impressive variety of seafood on offer. One of the fishmongers walked up to us and starting speaking in rapid-fire Japanese. We smiled at him politely, patiently waiting for him to come to the realization that we didn’t speak the language. But he was a loquacious one, and kept on gabbing away. And then, all of a sudden, he realized we weren’t responding, which was when he started laughing, shaking his head, and asked what could only be “Oh, you don’t speak Nihongo?” in Japanese.

And then he put his arms around my shoulders, starts pointing at my wife and begins with his rapid-fire speech again. He was nodding, making the thumbs-up sign, and I caught the words “Nihonjin” quite a few times. I think he was saying my wife looks Japanese (it’s not the first time we’ve heard that). And then he gave me a friendly slap on the arms, and with more thumbs-up in Christina’s direction, gives me the universal “You lucky dog” smile that men the world over all understand. Who said the Japanese are reserved?

There was a restaurant attached to that store, which we recognized from one of the TVB food programs that we’d watched. One of the walls was covered with testimonials from previous visitors, and we recognized one from Leung Man To. Well, with references like that, how could we not eat our third meal of the day there?

Spartan but clean surroundings. The wall with the tuna drawing was covered with testimonials from previous “famous” visitors.

One side of the picture menu. Prices here weren’t cheap.

The other side of the menu.

Self-serve tea and eating utensils.

And here’s what we ordered.

A chirashi bowl with ika (squid), amaebi (prawn), maguro (tuna), awabi (abalone), uni (sea urchin roe) and ikura (salmon roe). This was AWESOME. I don’t know how we ate it all up, but we did. Everything was good, but ikura was a revelation. The ikura we get in Vancouver is a bit cloudy, but the ones in Sapporo were ruby red and very clear. And in your mouth, each globule pops and releases a burst of fresh, rich, salty goodness with a slightly sweet finish. Nothing I’ve eaten outside of Sapporo have tasted this good.

After our third meal of the day, we walked around the store contemplating buying some seafood to eat back at the hotel. Here’s some of the items on sale at the store:

King crab legs

Air dried fish

Fish roe

Uni. I think Uni wasn’t in season yet, for the roe was pretty small in size.

Hokkaido hairy crab

Spiny king crab

Queen crab

King crab. Mmmm… King crab. All packed for travel and ready to go.

The friendly Japanese guy snapped a couple of photos of us, and we were on our way. Some of you might know that I’m a huge car nut, so I took several photos of cars that I found interesting.

For instance, in Japan, this Legend is properly labeled a Honda. “Acura” is a brand made-up purely for the North American market. What’s wrong with calling a Honda a Honda?

In a land where small cars are the norm, it’s always hilarious to see something like this Chevy Suburban. All blinged up with 22 inch chromed rims too…

Next post, snacks and the best sushi we’ve had to date. Keep watching this space…