Back to Hokkaido in June. When last seen there, we had just landed at New Chitose airport and had stuffed ourselves full of very good ramen at Ebisoba Ichigen‘s outlet in the Ramen Dojyo at the airport. We then took the train to Sapporo and checked into our hotel. After relaxing for a little bit we went out to wander the city. We had no set plans. Sapporo is particularly known for a couple of genres of food: soup curry is one of them and jingisukan is the other. I was not super interested in soup curry but figured we might find a place to eat jingisukan somewhere or the other near the Susukino neighbourhood, which is where we were going to end up. But when the time came, the places with strong reviews on Tabelog were predictably not possible to get into without a reservation and so we began to look around us. Finally, I just searched Tabelog by restaurants within a short walk of where we were that took online reservations and had seats available that evening. The search recommended an izakaya just two minutes walk from us: Taishu Niku Kappou Niku Kyuu. Making it in for dinner was still not an easy experience, however.

As we were literally right there I didn’t bother making the reservation and we walked on over. The building was easy to find; the restaurant, on the other hand, was a different story. There are nine floors in the building and while a few were listed with English names, the restaurant was not one of them. Why it didn’t occur to me to Google translate the list of names, I don’t know. In the end we went into a liquor store in the adjoining building and asked a staff member if he knew where the restaurant was. He had never heard of it but very kindly came over with us to the other building, looked at the list of businesses and directed us to the fourth floor. We thanked him profusely and took the elevator up and found the restaurant directly opposite it. This was not the end of our troubles, however.

The restaurant—comprised of a counter with 12 or so seats and two private rooms off to the side—was mostly empty. But the staff member who met us when we slid the door open told us they could not seat us without a reservation. I quickly fired up the Tabelog app to make one on the spot, but wouldn’t you know it, it no longer showed any seats available. We asked the guy—who had a lot more English than we have Japanese, but, alas, that was still no so very much—if an exception could be made. At this point he seemed to notice the boys behind us, told us to wait and walked over to one of the private rooms. There he had a very animated conversation with someone or the other and then came back and told us we could have four seats at the counter. We thanked him profusely as well and sat down. We also asked if he needed us to eat quickly and give the seats back but he said that wouldn’t be necessary. And, indeed, we were the last customers to be seated for the duration of our meal. The only other people there were the group in the private room and a family of three at the other end of the counter.

Having finally made it in, we quickly got down to business. The menu turned out to be entirely in Japanese. This time, however, I had Google Translate at the ready. Much on the menu was extremely enticing. We decided to begin with shabu shabu and hot pot. We got two orders of the Marbled Beef Tongue Shabu Shabu and two orders of the Chicken Golden Soup Hot Pot. Before the soups came out they put down an appetizer trio in front of each of us. This is what you get for the per person table charge of 550 yen. It included simmered octopus, a cold “salad” of mushrooms and greens, and a dish of mixed braised things. All very tasty. Then the ordered food began to arrive. They first brought out the shabu shabu. They placed one burner between the older boy and me and another between the missus and the younger boy. We got to work on preparing the broth and swishing the tongue, which was rather good—indeed, we got an add-on of more tongue. Once we were done with the shabu shabu they brought out the chicken broth and the hot pot fixings. The soup is apparently made by simmering some special breed of chicken for many hours and some of that chicken is presented with it, seared, on a plate with greens and mushrooms. We finished cooking the chicken in the rich chicken soup and it was outstanding. Giving up that lovely soup after the chicken was done seemed like a crime; and so we got a couple of orders of egg noodles to cook in the remaining soup.

Oh yes, I forgot that the missus and I had also got an order of Chawanmushi with Uni to share. This was brought out between the two hot pots. After finishing all of the above, we ate some grilled meat: Marbled Beef Tongue to be exact. This was highly marbled and sliced very thin like sashimi with shiso leaves and chives in the center. Alongside it came a large platter in the center of which was an extremely hot, polished round rock. We were told to sear the tongue on the rock and eat it with the greens. This we did and were happy. The missus and the younger boy closed their accounts at this point. The older boy and I were full too but he wanted to eat some wagyu and I wanted to eat some horse meat (which is the specialty of the house). And so we got two pieces of Seared Kuroge Wagyu Sushi and two pieces of Raw Sea Urchin Gunkan, the rice wrapped with raw horse meat and topped with uni. Both were outstanding.

Ah yes, drinks. The boys had colas, the missus and I started with a beer each and then I got a highball to follow.

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much the meal cost and to see what’s coming next.

After the difficulty of making it in the door, service was very warm and attentive. Price? All of the above plus tax came to 23,210 yen or $145 at the current exchange rate. Very good value, I would say. Indeed, after the hassle of finding the place and getting seated, it turned out to be one of our favourite meals of our week on Hokkaido. I don’t know if we’ll make it back to Sapporo again but if so, I wouldn’t mind coming back here to try more of their menu—we saw some things going out to the other diners that looked very enticing indeed.

Alright, what’s next on the food front? I hope to get that delayed review of my dinner at Masque in Bombay out tomorrow. My Twin Cities report next week will be on the dinner we are scheduled to eat at Diane’s Place tonight. Plus I’ll have more from Seoul and Sapporo.