New dishes/ingredients tried that I’d never tried before:
Haskap berries: I couldn’t find them fresh, only partially frozen and ice-encrusted in the too-cold refrigerator section of the souvenir shop at the Otaru JR station. They were tongue-buzzingly sour and only palatable spread on a croissant.
Hairy crab: This is the food I kicked myself for nearly a year for failing to try in Hong Kong. I would have failed here in Hokkaido as well – you seem to need a deep-pocketed entourage for a hairy crab feast, and all I have is a staunch vegetarian – except that on my last day in Hakodate, I was thrilled to randomly find a giant pre-cracked hairy crab leg and half-body submerged in my miso soup, which was itself an accompaniment to:
Fresh squid sashimi: While I have had squid sashimi before, I’ve always dismissed it as flavorless rubber bands. Cut directly from a squid that was swimming around seconds before, it’s more like flavorless tacky jello strands. Oh well. I tried.
Squid ink ice cream: Sinisterly pitch black ice cream that tastes like… cream. Perhaps squid just doesn’t have any taste at all? But lest you think maybe I’m just biased against squid…
Squid liver: As you may gather from this entry, squid liver is a winner, along with every other type of liver I’ve ever eaten.
Squid crackers and sea urchin crackers: These are a mainstay on shelves in souvenir shops, and are actually delicious, and yes, do actually contain squid and sea urchin as a significant portion of the ingredients. No, I don’t know how they don’t go bad. They have the texture of slightly thicker versions of those baked potato chips that cornered the ‘healthy chip’ market back when people were still scared of fried food.
Iwashi (sardine sashimi): Sardines are amazing as sushi. So soft and silky and yielding. Why they’re pooh-poohed as lower-class fish is utterly beyond me.
Yubari melon: Furano is famous for these melons, and I ate one with the aromas of melon and lavender mingling in the air, drifting over from the farms in which they were grown.
Wasabi sorbet: This was pressed upon me by the sweetest pair of Japanese (but English-speaking) tourists from Yokohama who happened to sit next to me at a fancy traditional sushi bar and keep me from making a fool out of myself. They were shocked to find that Americans use the terms ‘wasabi’ and ‘horseradish’ more or less interchangably, and wanted me to have this sorbet to prove once and for all that they’re different. I mean, who would eat horseradish sorbet? It was mild, vegetably, and more tangy than spicy.
Japanese-style cheesecake: More of a suggestion of a cake than an actual physical cake, these airy half-palm-sized cakes evaporate into a light cream the instant they come in contact with your tongue.
Favorite meal: Ha ha, this is not a remotely answerable question. Let’s try these:
Best uni (sea urchin): Let me preface this by saying that I will probably refrain from eating uni in the U.S. from now on. After having better uni than fancy-U.S.-restaurant uni as a) a flavoring on a gift shop cracker, and b) from a grocery store deli case, I am now irreversibly spoiled and choose to wait until my next Japan trip. Anyway, I picture the taste of uni on a spectrum from iodine-y or bitter (bad) to briny and oysteresque or sweet (good). The best briny uni was either at Uni Murakami, the formerly Michelin-starred eatery at Hakodate’s Morning Market, or at Sushi Dokoro Kihara in Yunokawa, and the best sweet uni was either at the Jiyuichi Market in Hakodate or at Sakanaya no Daidokoro in Sapporo. So yes, basically I’m saying that almost every uni I tried was awesome – just awesome in different ways.
Also, my dad requested that I title a blog post “Searchin’ for the Urchin”. Since I don’t plan to do an entire post on uni, please consider that the title of my last paragraph.
Best ramen: Full disclosure: I’m not a ramen girl. But each Hokkaido city I’ve visited lays claim to mastering one of the three major types of ramen, so it’d be silly not to pit them against each other. Asahikawa owns shoyu (soy), Sapporo owns miso, and Hakodate owns shio (salt).
Keeping in mind I only sampled one restaurant in each city, the winner is pretty easy: Sapporo. Ramen Shingen’srich, salty, murky red broth, snappy noodles, and thin-sliced, fully-half-fat pork was thoroughly enjoyable all the way to the last sip, and could only have been improved with an egg, which was my fault for not adding on. I cheated a little at Mizuno in Asahikawa by ordering ginger shoyu ramen instead of plain shoyu ramen, but I really don’t like shoyu ramen and wanted to give it at least a chance to be palatable. And it was: spicy with ginger shreds and full of tender bamboo and skinny noodles. Hakodate’s Ramen Ajisai comes in a distant third with ramen that tastes like chicken broth and is topped with still-cold deli-turkey-esque ‘chashu’. Better stick to squid, Hakodate. (No doubt they serve squid ramen somewhere.)
Most Unexpectedly Amazing Meal: Toyako Onsen may have overlooked a breathtakingly beautiful misty volcanic lake, but it barely had any food options (I ate dinner at 7-11 the second night, after some nightmarish takoyaki the first one). However, when we biked around Lake Toya’s perimeter, a surprisingly difficult (but of course picturesque and worth it) 22 mile slog, we discovered that the town on the opposite end of the lake featured a visitor centre with outstanding bukkake udon made with thickly marinated mushrooms, tempura crumbles, green onions, nori, and a fresh raw egg cracked over it all. Let me repeat: a visitor centre. In a touristy town. With no obligation or impetus to have good food. This simple noodle dish was so carefully portioned and divided and every ingredient tasted like it had just been picked, laid, sliced, or fried.
Meal At Which I Was Most Out Of My Element: I accidentally chose a really fancy traditional sushi bar for lunch in Yunokawa where only about 9 patrons were let in at once to sit in a semicircle around three sushi chefs who dedicated themselves exclusively – up close and personal – to 3 patrons each. Since everything was omakase, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t order, but there was a certain amount of risk in not being able to fit nigiri into my mouth whole, dipping the nigiri wrong and the rice falling apart, getting full before the courses were finished, being served octopus, etc. Luckily, the English-speaking couple from Yokohama was there, and I copied everything they did, sighing with relief whenever they did something imperfect to mask my own imperfections. I was rewarded with excellent uni (of course – de rigeur by now), a long skinny shell-less crab leg topped by organy tasting roe, two different cuts of tuna, scallop, and crunchy herring roe with the texture of baby corn. And the wasabi sorbet, of course.
Most Un-Japanese Meal: Surprisingly, NOT the Indian thali I had after overdosing on seafood bowls. The winner of this category goes to a woodsy cabin in Furano serving curry rice that had rude, confrontational signs all along its outer walls with unfollowable rules about how to behave. They were very firm about customers finishing their plates, admonishing foreigners (and only foreigners; the signs all began ‘Dear foreigners’) to only order what they could finish. I ordered the smallest possible menu item, and it was gigantic. While this totally un-Japanese frustation annoyed me, I have to admit that their homemade sausage curry rice was the best curry I’ve ever tasted. Spicy and complex, it bore no resemblance to any chain or boxed variety.
And I got full before the plate was empty, and I left, and there was nothing they could do about it.
The Breath of Fresh Air: I love seafood, of course, and I estimate I ate it every single day on this trip. But sometimes I longer for a vegetarian interlude, and Rojiura Curry Samurai in Sapporo provided the best of these rare interludes with a curry claiming to be made with 20 seasonal vegetables. When it arrived, every single one of these 20 vegetables was outlined in relief, from lotus root to cassava to carrot to chestnut. I ordered my curry cut with soy milk to balance the spicy tomato base, and accompanied by a yuzu lassi. Japanese-Indian fusion can be a little watered down, but this was anything but.
—
When my plane touches down in Taipei, Taiwan, I’ll take my vacuum-packed ika-meshi (rice-stuffed squid) that I bought at the airport, save it for a special occasion when I feel like remembering Japan, and otherwise shift gears. My culinary wish list in Taiwan includes: guancai ban, yam leaves with pork, shimu yu (milkfish soup), fried milkfish, luffa with clam, shachang fish (raw barracuda), mua gui, eel noodle soup, danzaimian, seafood congee, starfruit, durian, pomelo, custard apple, and Taitung sticky rice. Onward!
Favorite meal: Ha ha, this is not a remotely answerable question. Let’s try these:
Best uni (sea urchin): Let me preface this by saying that I will probably refrain from eating uni in the U.S. from now on. After having better uni than fancy-U.S.-restaurant uni as a) a flavoring on a gift shop cracker, and b) from a grocery store deli case, I am now irreversibly spoiled and choose to wait until my next Japan trip. Anyway, I picture the taste of uni on a spectrum from iodine-y or bitter (bad) to briny and oysteresque or sweet (good). The best briny uni was either at Uni Murakami, the formerly Michelin-starred eatery at Hakodate’s Morning Market, or at Sushi Dokoro Kihara in Yunokawa, and the best sweet uni was either at the Jiyuichi Market in Hakodate or at Sakanaya no Daidokoro in Sapporo. So yes, basically I’m saying that almost every uni I tried was awesome – just awesome in different ways.
Also, my dad requested that I title a blog post “Searchin’ for the Urchin”. Since I don’t plan to do an entire post on uni, please consider that the title of my last paragraph.
Best ramen: Full disclosure: I’m not a ramen girl. But each Hokkaido city I’ve visited lays claim to mastering one of the three major types of ramen, so it’d be silly not to pit them against each other. Asahikawa owns shoyu (soy), Sapporo owns miso, and Hakodate owns shio (salt).
Keeping in mind I only sampled one restaurant in each city, the winner is pretty easy: Sapporo. Ramen Shingen’srich, salty, murky red broth, snappy noodles, and thin-sliced, fully-half-fat pork was thoroughly enjoyable all the way to the last sip, and could only have been improved with an egg, which was my fault for not adding on. I cheated a little at Mizuno in Asahikawa by ordering ginger shoyu ramen instead of plain shoyu ramen, but I really don’t like shoyu ramen and wanted to give it at least a chance to be palatable. And it was: spicy with ginger shreds and full of tender bamboo and skinny noodles. Hakodate’s Ramen Ajisai comes in a distant third with ramen that tastes like chicken broth and is topped with still-cold deli-turkey-esque ‘chashu’. Better stick to squid, Hakodate. (No doubt they serve squid ramen somewhere.)
Most Unexpectedly Amazing Meal: Toyako Onsen may have overlooked a breathtakingly beautiful misty volcanic lake, but it barely had any food options (I ate dinner at 7-11 the second night, after some nightmarish takoyaki the first one). However, when we biked around Lake Toya’s perimeter, a surprisingly difficult (but of course picturesque and worth it) 22 mile slog, we discovered that the town on the opposite end of the lake featured a visitor centre with outstanding bukkake udon made with thickly marinated mushrooms, tempura crumbles, green onions, nori, and a fresh raw egg cracked over it all. Let me repeat: a visitor centre. In a touristy town. With no obligation or impetus to have good food. This simple noodle dish was so carefully portioned and divided and every ingredient tasted like it had just been picked, laid, sliced, or fried.
Meal At Which I Was Most Out Of My Element: I accidentally chose a really fancy traditional sushi bar for lunch in Yunokawa where only about 9 patrons were let in at once to sit in a semicircle around three sushi chefs who dedicated themselves exclusively – up close and personal – to 3 patrons each. Since everything was omakase, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t order, but there was a certain amount of risk in not being able to fit nigiri into my mouth whole, dipping the nigiri wrong and the rice falling apart, getting full before the courses were finished, being served octopus, etc. Luckily, the English-speaking couple from Yokohama was there, and I copied everything they did, sighing with relief whenever they did something imperfect to mask my own imperfections. I was rewarded with excellent uni (of course – de rigeur by now), a long skinny shell-less crab leg topped by organy tasting roe, two different cuts of tuna, scallop, and crunchy herring roe with the texture of baby corn. And the wasabi sorbet, of course.
Most Un-Japanese Meal: Surprisingly, NOT the Indian thali I had after overdosing on seafood bowls. The winner of this category goes to a woodsy cabin in Furano serving curry rice that had rude, confrontational signs all along its outer walls with unfollowable rules about how to behave. They were very firm about customers finishing their plates, admonishing foreigners (and only foreigners; the signs all began ‘Dear foreigners’) to only order what they could finish. I ordered the smallest possible menu item, and it was gigantic. While this totally un-Japanese frustation annoyed me, I have to admit that their homemade sausage curry rice was the best curry I’ve ever tasted. Spicy and complex, it bore no resemblance to any chain or boxed variety.
And I got full before the plate was empty, and I left, and there was nothing they could do about it.
The Breath of Fresh Air: I love seafood, of course, and I estimate I ate it every single day on this trip. But sometimes I longer for a vegetarian interlude, and Rojiura Curry Samurai in Sapporo provided the best of these rare interludes with a curry claiming to be made with 20 seasonal vegetables. When it arrived, every single one of these 20 vegetables was outlined in relief, from lotus root to cassava to carrot to chestnut. I ordered my curry cut with soy milk to balance the spicy tomato base, and accompanied by a yuzu lassi. Japanese-Indian fusion can be a little watered down, but this was anything but.
—
When my plane touches down in Taipei, Taiwan, I’ll take my vacuum-packed ika-meshi (rice-stuffed squid) that I bought at the airport, save it for a special occasion when I feel like remembering Japan, and otherwise shift gears. My culinary wish list in Taiwan includes: guancai ban, yam leaves with pork, shimu yu (milkfish soup), fried milkfish, luffa with clam, shachang fish (raw barracuda), mua gui, eel noodle soup, danzaimian, seafood congee, starfruit, durian, pomelo, custard apple, and Taitung sticky rice. Onward!
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