A few weeks ago, specifically October 16, I went out to Sapporo to get out of my place, eat some good food and do some shopping. It was honestly mostly centered around Sapporo station, but really, Sapporo station itself is endless and there’s already plenty to do there anyway. I might have mentioned this previously, but I do try to make a trip out at least every other week to do some casual sightseeing, and regularly get in some good food I can’t usually get in my small town because I am a very big foodie. This particular day, I had a very specific plan and itinerary, mostly because I had some food spots I wanted to hit up and do some casual shoping in modest preparation for the upcoming Hokkaido winter. I don’t think I will be fully prepared until winter is actually here, but I’ll deal with that when it comes, I guess.
My bus arrived at Sapporo station around 10:20. My first official stop was to get a sort of brunch situation at a beef tongue place in Pole Town around Susukino station. The walk there would take about 15 minutes, but the restaurant was supposed to open at 11, so on my way there, I stopped by Kinotaya Bake near Pole Town to get a breakfast for the day, since I didn’t eat yet to have an empty stomach ready for a day of food. There’s various Kinotaya shops around Sapporo, but this small one mostly specializes in small baked cheese tarts, along with other baked goods and ice cream. I had been meaning to check this one out at some point, and since it’s getting colder and ice cream season is slowly going away (but I’m always down for some ice cream!), it was a good chance to fit it in my schedule. I’m honestly not a cheesecake person anyway, but I was interested in their apple pie, so I ended up getting the apple pie and the soft serve in a cone (cup or cone costed the same).
Overall, I was generally happy with both. The ice cream was so good though! I’ve been trying quite a bit of soft serve since I came here (when in Hokkaido, eat all the ice cream, right?). This one was really thick and creamy, but with a light milky flavor, and having the mini spoon with it really helped. The cone was really good too, crisp and nice wafer flavor! As for the apple pie, flavor-wise it was good, apples were not too mushy, had a somewhat fresh flavor to them, and crust was flaky. There was also some cream inside, which reminded me of a strawberry croissant from back home. However, I was slightly disappointed because it wasn’t hot or even warm, so it didn’t seem too fresh. The top of the pie also kind of stuck to the paper wrap, so I lost out on a bit of the crust there…
Then onto the beef tongue! I was able to have a good look at the other Pole Town shops since the beef tongue place is at the very end right before the Susukino station entrance. I arrived just a bit after 11, and even though the shop itself is pretty small, it was relatively empty, so I sat down right away. Since I had previously looked the menu up online, I already knew what I wanted: the Upper Tongue Set, if I have to roughly translate it. It was in the middle of the three standard tongue sets, and I figured, since I was at a tongue place, might as well get the more rare thicker cut while I was at it.
Gosh everything about the meal was so good! The tongue was perfectly cooked, just a bit of chew but still tender, and really flavorful. The pickled veggies on the side were also very nice to eat between bites. The tail soup that came with the set was also super warming; it was a light broth, but also was not too peppery. I’m a rice girl, and their rice was also really good and came at a perfect size. I’m not entirely sure what the little seasoning thing on the side was, but it was quite interesting, and not bad.
I had previously discovered there’s a Mandarake in Sapporo, and right down the street from the beef tongue place, so my next stop was to window shop in the Mandarake. Mandarake is a used goods store that usually specializes in more retro merchandise, but does sell many more recent second-hand products as well. On my way, I found that the building it’s located in has a similar to Book-Off and Mandarake style second-hand merch store? pop-up? area that was selling loose goods by merchandise type and series. I’m not entirely sure if that just happened to be there or if it was temporary, but it was a nice find! I ended up getting a few things from there because the deals were pretty good…and then ended up staring at a bunch of cool things in the Mandarake.
Then I went back underground to take a look at the other shops the underground walkway has to offer. I had walked the main strip before, but I was mostly going to window shop Aurora Town, another strip that goes along the side in the middle of the underground walkway. It was longer than I thought it’d be, but cool to look around nonetheless.
I wasn’t super hungry or anything, but could eat, and my next stop on the way back to the main Sapporo station was Formosa cafe, a Taiwanese-style cafe. I ate a lot of Taiwanese food at home, and was really craving some Chinese or Taiwanese food recently. Plus, I had looked this place up before and it looked cute and the food looked relatively more authentic. When I arrived, I was essentially seated right away, and I decided to order the Beef Noodle Soup.
It was pretty good! I asked the waitress to make sure, and she said it wasn’t spicy, which is good for me because I’m super weak to spice. True to her word, it wasn’t spicy at all, and the broth had a light beefy flavor to it. I think the overall dish was relatively balanced, but could have used some more beef chunks with meat, as many of the pieces had like fatty-ish pieces attched to them. The meat was super tender though. The noodles were also really good, and texturally felt somewhat unique, and good as soup noodles.
I was really on schedule, as I aimed to be done with this part of the day around 2:30, and it was a little before 2:30 when I started heading towards the GU in Esta. I window shopped for a bit in the Esta building, and ended up buying a few items at GU I was eyeing for a bit.
Finally, because I always have to get my boba when I get out, I went to Gong Cha for boba. You can read about that in this post, on my boba blog.
And then I got on a bus around 4:30pm, and went home!
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