Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

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…

Location: Sapporo, Japan

Author: My Husband

Since Hokkaido is renowned as a port of entry for Japanese seafood, Christina and I were planning to have a crab meal in Sapporo. But where do we go? Well, as luck would have it, two of our friends, one whom used to be a travel agent and is very familiar with Sapporo, were in town (in the same hotel in fact) the same days we were. We asked him where we should go, and “Kani Shogun” was his reply. We had the concierge make the reservation for us that morning. That evening, soon after “Ramen Hour”, we walked the three or so blocks from Ramen Yokocho to keep our dinner reservation at the restaurant.

And what a restaurant! Similar to the higher-end places in Asia, Kani Shogun actually took up an entire building.

Kani Shogun – “Crab General” – has several locations throughout Japan. Their Sapporo location in Susukino, like many other crab restaurants in the city, has a large mechanical crab with waving claws/legs hung just above its entrance

Here’s a closer look:

The mechanical crab is actually quite detailed. We saw something very similar at a restaurant in Osaka, but I don’t know who had the idea first. But I guess there’s no mistaking the kind of food they serve behind these doors.

My wife and I walked in through the automatic doors, locked away our umbrella in a secure stand, and were formally greeted by the staff. All the female staff at Kani Shogun wore traditional kimonos, and behaved very professionally and formally at all times. We were politely invited to remove our shoes in the grand foyer, and were handed off to a hostess who led us to the elevator for the ride upstairs. We weren’t given a chance to touch the buttons – all the buttons were pressed by our hostess outside the elevator with an efficiency of motion that was astounding. And as the elevator doors closed, she gave us a deep bow. At this point, we didn’t know what we were supposed to do after we reached our floor, but we needn’t have worried. As soon as the doors opened, there was another hostess, who after greeting us with another deep bow, led us to our private dining room.

There were several of these private dining room on each of the floors. Each one is designed to have a little porch with a fence…

… and a miniature rock garden.

Each room has a sliding door, which was always closed when the waitress wasn’t in the room. There was a call-button on the table, and a press of that would have somebody knocking on the door within seconds. The tatami rooms were minimalistic in design, which added to the Japanese-ness of the entire experience. Our two waitresses took care of us very well, and their English was much much better than our Japanese. The service at Kani Shogun (well, at all the places we visited in Sapporo) could not be faulted at all.

So after stuffing ourselves silly all day, we had decisions to make. There were several very appealing kaiseki meals available at Kani Shogun; however, we also had the option to order the crab sampler, which consisted of just crabs and nothing else. Since we were here to eat Hokkaido crabs and weren’t all that hungry, it made sense for us to try the crab sampler. However, in an attempt at variety, we also ordered a side dish of crab innard hotpot, and a BBQ king crab leg.

Naturally, one would order Sapporo beer when in Sapporo. Interestingly, the beer is no longer brewed within Sapporo city limits, but at least the brewery is still in Hokkaido.

Crab innard hotpot. Frankly, only in Japan can a serving of crab innards look so good. We mixed all the ingredients together in the pot and allowed it to heat up, then ate it neat. It was oh so rich; sweet, complex, with a slightly bitter finish. This was great – but you wouldn’t want to eat too much of it lest it fills you up before the main course.

Our crab sampler. There was one whole hairy crab, the legs & claws of a queen crab, and the legs of a king crab. This was meant to serve 5, but since it was our main course, we finished it between the two of us (albeit with a bit of difficulty as we were soooo full…). The king crab tasted best – sweet and succulent. The queen crabs were a close second – the meat was sweet, but not as succulent as the king. The hairy crab was the least special – it tasted very much like a Dungeness.

No scissors or crackers were provided because none were needed. In typical Japanese attention to detail, the shell on these crab pieces were trimmed in such a way that you could access every nook and cranny with the crab pick. Very convenient and very thoughtful.

A closer look at the crab.

The BBQ king crab leg. OMG. This was too awesome – it was even more succulent that the king crab pieces on the platter. And again, notice how the shell has been trimmed away – even the knuckles – such that the meat can be extracted easily and conveniently? Simply wonderful.

By the time we slurped up the last of the BBQ leg, we were feeling like a couple of lard asses. Thank goodness were were going to be in town for only 3.5 days, or no post-vacation diet in the world would get us back to our fighting weights. After our meal and feeling veeeeery satisfied, the floor hostess showed us to the elevator and proferred another deep bow as the doors were closing.

We settled our bill at the cashier station on the ground level, and after yet another round of bowing, we found our shoes laid out all ready for us; a male employee was standing by with a shoehorn just in case… What attentive service!

After leaving the restaurant, we decided to walk off the meal, and here are some of the things we saw:

Supersized neon signs…

… all over the place.

The Tanuki Koji Shopping Arcade, which spanned several parallel streets. There were a good number of stores and restaurants here.

And as honest-to-goodness dedicated foodies, we took the chance to visit the restaurant-level at Sapporo station before walking back to our hotel. These are a lot more appealing than pictures in menu, don’t you think?

While walking around Sapporo Station, we came upon a sushi restaurant that would really open our eyes (and tastebuds) to excellent sushi. That post is to come. For my next post – more crabs at the Seafood market in Sapporo.

Location: Sapporo, Japan

Author: My Husband

Our last stop on the trip before heading home was the city of Sapporo in northern Japan. We have visited quite a few places in Japan in the last several years, but all of them were located on Honshu island. This was our first time in Sapporo, which is situated on the northern island of Hokkaido.

It took us a little while to get from HK to Hokkaido (my wife will probably roll her eyes at my definition of “little”). We first had to fly from HK back to Singapore (on a SQ A380 – nice!), and then waited 4 hrs at Changi for our overnight flight to Tokyo Narita on yet another SQ A380. We waited out a 3 hr connection at Narita in the ANA lounge, then spent another 2 hrs on a regional flight from Tokyo Narita to Sapporo New Chitose. I didn’t mind the flying – airplanes are almost like a third home for me anyway – but Christina thought I was nuts.

Pretty sky somewhere between Tokyo and Sapporo.

A glimpse of the outlying areas surrounding Sapporo – very agricultural. What a difference compared to the built-up areas surrounding Tokyo.

Oh yeah – funny story on the flight from HK to Singapore. My wife, who is now a certifiable Iberico ham fanatic, found some good-quality jamon Iberico de Bellota at Seibu’s “Great” food hall, so she bought a small pack to eat on the flight. In the air, she shared some of the ham with my Aunt, and before long, I had two hysterical women lamenting the fact that Iberico wasn’t available in Singapore or Canada. Great… (We later found out that Iberico ham is available at Bosa Foods and Oyama Sausage. Oyama Sausage has the better quality ham from acorn-fed pigs – jamon Iberico de Bellota. Bosa Foods only sells regular jamon Iberico. Christina will be writing a post about this soon enough..)

We got into Narita at around 7:30 in the morning. I slept a little during the flight, so I was feeling pretty good. My wife on the other hand, didn’t sleep much and promptly fell into a deep slumber while sitting upright in the ANA lounge. Since my company was fast asleep, I took a leisurely shower and amused myself by pouring beverages, one after another, using the infamous Japanese beer machine in the lounge.

This is a typical self-serve beer machine in the ANA lounge. You put a glass in the metal holder and press the start button. The machine then tilts the glass and dispenses the beer until you press the stop button. The automated tilting action ensures a perfect head of foam every time. Yes, it probably was too early to drink, but hey, I was on vacation.

Typical Japanese attention to detail. Beer glasses were kept cool in the fridge. Only Japanese airline lounges serve Pocari drinks – I was tempted to have a can to relive my youth, but draft Sapporo won out in the end. The white liquid in the top shelf? Hokkaido milk, imho, the best tasting milk in the world.

The ANA regional flight got us into Sapporo in the early afternoon and we made our way from the airport to Sapporo Station on the JR Express train. A word of advice to those of you who are thinking of travelling to Japan: pack light. Our bags weren’t large by North American standards, but we encountered some challenges getting them onto and off the train. And when onboard, there really wasn’t any space to put the bags without getting in the way of other passengers. Needless to say, our bags were the largest ones onboard…

We stayed at the Keio Plaza Sapporo, which is located several minutes walk away from Sapporo Station. The following are views from our room:

View to the west. JR train tracks are in the foreground.

View to the east, looking towards Sapporo station.

By the time we were settled in, it was already early evening. The long travelling hours were starting to catch up to us, and we just wanted to get something to eat and turn in early. We didn’t have any idea what we were going to to eat, so we walked out to Sapporo Station to check out what was available.

Now, Japan is the land of plenty when it comes to many things, but food has to be at the top of the list. We strolled into the basement food hall at Daimaru and we were lost in a wonderful maze of food stalls selling an amazing variety of foodstuffs – think super-sized foodcourt on crack (without the chairs/tables) and you’ll get a sense of what we found ourselves in the middle of. Sleep and hunger forgotten, we spent the next hour walking around the Daimaru food hall, and then through the underground mall to the other food halls in the basement of the JR Sapporo Station complex.

One of the reasons we came to Sapporo was for the food, and we knew rightaway that we weren’t going to be disappointed. Something Christina really wanted to eat on this trip was authentic Japanese tonkatsu, or deep-fried pork chop. We were supposed to go to a restaurant in HK to do so, but we never made it there. As luck would have it, we ran smack into a tonkatsu restaurant on one of the dining floors in Stellar Place, a multi-storey mall connected to Sapporo Station. We didn’t wait for an invitation; we stepped right on in.

Tonkatsu restaurant. One of the things about Japan is the discipline and consistency with which malls are designed. In the basement, you will find the food hall. Keep going up the escalators and you will find yourself on the dining floor – restaurants galore. A true foodie paradise, Japan is.

The staff in the restaurant did not speak much English, and we did not speak an iota of Japanese. But this being Japan, we were offered picture menus as soon as the staff realized we weren’t locals. The funniest thing was Christina being mistaken for being Japanese ALL the time, and I will relate a funny story about this in a later post.

One thing that I noticed was the patience that people in Sapporo had for foreigners – they were extremely nice to non-Japanese speaking people, which made things a lot easier for us. In Tokyo and Osaka, people are slightly less patient. The worst experience we had was in Kyoto, where some of the sales people we tried to buy stuff from were downright rude to us. In terms of tourist-friendliness, Sapporo is the perfect city for first time visitors to Japan.

But back to tonkatsu – the picture menu was pretty comprehensive. You could choose the kind of pork, the size of the tonkatsu by weight, the meat to fat ratio, and a host of other stuff. Because Japanese kanji is approx 70% similar to written Chinese, we generally understood the context of the information being presented. I ended up choosing a set meal with a 164g tonkatsu. My wife went all out and chose a 250g piece. After making our choices, our food started showing up pretty quickly…

These were the condiments and “tools” that were placed on every table. On the left, you have the mortar and pestle for grinding up sesame seeds, a bottle of which you see on the right; the ground sesame paste is used as a sauce for the tonkatsu. Next to the mortar and pestle, you have a selection of salad dressing. Next to that, you have one jar of sweet sauce and another jar of spicy sauce.

This trio of pickled vegetables were presented to us before our tonkatsu arrived. All were very good, and we ended up eating quite a bit of the middle one, as well as the one on the right. Also served, but not photographed, were two bowls of very tasty miso soup.

Then these were served.

Tonkatsu – perfectly fried with no excess oil. And tonkatsu is always served with a healthy heaping of shredded cabbage. Guess the greens balance out the fried pork chop. This was my 164g order.

This was Christina’s 250g order, which was sliced before serving. See how light and crispy the panko crust looks? Also, see how thick the tonkatsu is? It puts to shame all the pale imitations served at the Taiwanese and Japanese restaurants in Vancouver.

Another view of the pork chop. It was fully cooked (no medium rare doneness here), very moist, and had the perfect ratio of meat to fat. The texture was superb, and very umami tasting. It was, in a word, awesome.

Last but not least, two bowls of Japanese rice were served. Now, Japanese rice is very premium stuff and is not usually exported out of Japan. (The Japanese rice we buy in North America is grown in North America). The rice we had was soft, fluffy, and pleasingly starchy – it was superb. My wife, who usually doesn’t eat much rice, finished her whole bowl. She also had rice every morning for breakfast, so you know it’s gotta be good…

With our hunger fully sated, we made our way back to the hotel and settled in for our long-awaited sleep. But the tonkatsu was a really perfect way to start our vacation in Sapporo, and it was just a teaser of the great things that were to come…

In the next few posts, we’ll talk about seriously good eats in Sapporo…