Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

Location: Sapporo, Japan

Author: My Husband

Before heading off to “Ramen Hour”, my wife and I spent the earlier part of the day walking around and sightseeing in Sapporo’s business district. Sapporo, Japan’s youngest and fifth-largest city, was planned much like a North American city where the grid pattern and rectangular city blocks dominate. The business district is pretty compact, and very walkable even though the chill in the air was a constant reminder that we were a little under-jacketed. But despite the cold, my wife was adamant about trying the famed soft-serve at the Hanabatake Farm retail store.

Hanabatake Farm retail store – right across the street from the historic Sapporo clock tower.

Hokkaido is famous for its agricultural products, especially milk. Milk from Hokkaido cows is so strongly perfumed, rich, smooth, and creamy that North American milk tastes bland by comparison. Hanabatake Farm is known for its range of high-quality dairy products made from the milk from their own herd of cows.

We tried the soft-serve, which turned out to be everything it was cracked up to be.

Hanabatake Farm soft serve. Smooth, rich, creamy, and redolent with milky goodness. It is very easy to get hooked on this stuff.

We also tried the milk pudding, which was packaged in a very interesting manner.

A cylinder containing three servings of milk pudding.

A closer look at how each serving is packaged up. The pudding is allowed to set in a tightly fastened balloon-like material, and is bouncy to the touch.

To eat, you pop the balloon with a toothpick and the pudding is readily released. It’s a very ingenious hygienic and green way to packaging pudding. And oh yeah, it was delicious.

Christina ended up buying several jars of condensed milk and dulce de leche to take home, and as of this writing, we’ve just finished up the last jar of it.

Our readers might remember that I had written about my new found fondness for Royce’ Chocolates in an earlier post on this travel series. In a rather serendipitous turn, we found after landing in Sapporo that Royce’ Chocolates were made in Hokkaido, and that there was a retail café in the city. It didn’t take much convincing for me to go and visit.

The Royce’ Café.

Serving their own Americano brew. It was pretty good – unlike many Japanese blends, it was actually on the richer/heavier side.

Royce’ Chocolate’s latest product – the chocolate covered potato chip. Word has it that these chips are quite tasty, but we didn’t buy any to try. Next time we will.

The café had the complete line of Nama chocolates. Suffice it to say, we bought a few to take home as souvenirs.

Royce’ has a range of ice cream flavours as well.

Royce’ also had a wide range of other products – cookies, teas, coffees, even cocoa based skin care products!

To end this post, here are some photos of Sapporo in no particular order…

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Author: My Husband

Before getting to the post about the world’s only Michelin three-starred Chinese restaurant, I’d like to write about a product that is sure to appeal to the chocoholics who read this blog.

What is in this bag? Read on to find out.

Those of us from my mom’s side of the family love our sweets. As long as it is a sweet high-quality confection, whether hot or cold, large or small, cheap or expensive, we are predisposed to liking it. It is in our genes; if we hear that it is sweet – and tasty – we will not relent until we hunt it down and devour it.

My foodie aunt and I both share a fondness for good chocolates. Actually, come to think of it, it was my aunt who got me hooked on chocolates, what with all the good stuff she brought back as gifts from her business trips when I was a kid. I especially liked it when she traveled to Europe since it meant I would be getting my hands on a large box of rich and sinful Swiss or German chocolates upon her return. That’s really where my liking of chocolates came from, and because I ate so much European chocolate when I was a kid, I grew up being very partial to them. North American ones, not so much…

I first saw the Royce’ chocolate counters in some of the higher-end supermarkets in Asia several years ago. As Royce’ chocolates weren’t from Europe, I never felt compelled to try them. So imagine my surprise when my aunt gushed about them when we were chatting last year. Though we shared similar chocolate preferences, she couldn’t stop singing praises about Royce’s Nama product.

So in Hong Kong, when we were making our usual rounds in the Time Square city’super (surely one of the best supermarkets in Hong Kong), my aunt got me a box of Royce’ Nama Bitter to try.

Like all things Japanese, the attention to detail in packing the item for transport was quite impressive.

Nama chocolates have to be refrigerated. So the sales rep. put the box of chocolates, along with a freezer pack, into a thermal envelope to prevent melting during transport.

And like many Japanese products, the product packaging is really impressive.

Attractive packaging.

Upon removing the outer wrapping, the box flips up to reveal a mini product pamphlet, a “spoon”, and the nicely air-tight package of chocolates.

Tearing away the air-tight packaging reveals a tray of chocolates that is protected by a clear plastic lid.

Lifting the lid reveals the precious nuggets of the chocolate they call Nama. To prevent sticking, the chocolate pieces are dusted with cocoa powder.

What do they taste like? Imagine a high-quality chocolate truffle, but without the outer chocolate covering. The Nama chocolates are rich, bold, smooth, and insanely sinful without being overly sweet. It was pure luxury, like eating semi-solid ganache, except better. The flavors were deep and complex with a long but clean finish. There was no noticeable aftertaste. This stuff could go head to head against some of the best brand name European chocolates, but costs only a fraction of the price. It was a revelation.

The Nama chocolates come in a variety of flavors. My aunt bought me the Bitter, which still had a pleasing sweetness to it. Interestingly, there was more than a slight hint of alcohol in it, which I found strange since there was no mention of it on the packaging. We later discovered that most of the Nama chocolates are flavored with alcohol, and where and how we made that discovery will be the topic of a future post.

For now, it suffices to say that I will be adding Royce’ Nama chocolates to my preferred chocolate list. And next time I’m in Asia, you can bet I’ll be making a beeline to stock up. If any of our chocoholic readers should find themselves in the vicinity of a Royce’ counter, I highly recommend that they do so as well.

(Unfortunately, Royce’ products are not yet available anywhere in North America…)