Eating in Hokkaido
Try these dishes while you are here.
Try these dishes while you are here.
Order the first one and work down the list.
We recommend ordering this one first.
Sea urchin and salmon roe over rice, eaten at a morning market. Expensive, and the reason people come north.
A Sapporo invention: thin spiced soup with a whole chicken leg and large vegetables in it, and rice on the side.
Lamb grilled on a domed iron plate with onions and cabbage. Eaten with beer, loudly.
Milk, butter, soft ice cream and grilled corn from the farms. Sold at every roadside stop.
Small shops, no English sign outside, and worth the walk.
The fish comes from Nemuro, at the far east end of Hokkaido. A conveyor belt, so you can point at what you want.
Miso broth with a layer of oil on top that keeps it hot to the last mouthful. In Nakanoshima, south of the city centre.
Mutton over a dome-shaped iron grill. You cook it yourself at a counter that seats about a dozen. Cash only, and there is usually a line.
Sapporo curry is a spiced broth rather than a thick sauce, with whole vegetables and a leg of chicken standing in it. You order the heat on a scale.
One corner of Hakodate's morning market, a minute from the station. About twenty small kitchens, most of them serving bowls of raw seafood over rice.
Tokachi is dairy country, and this shop built a sandwich out of it: white chocolate and butter cream with rum-soaked raisins, pressed between two soft biscuits.
Otaru’s Sakaimachi street runs between stone warehouses. Here the workshop is open to view through glass, and what comes off the line is sold warm at the counter.
Tokachi raises pigs, and Obihiro puts the meat straight onto rice — grilled, glazed, and nothing else in the bowl. The meat wholesaler that supplies it runs this shop.
Furano has its own omu-curry — curry under an omelette. Ten shops in the town each serve a version of it.
Asahikawa ramen is a soy-sauce soup of pork bone and dried sardine, with a film of oil on top so it stays hot. Eight shops here, so you can compare.