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After Yoichi, we headed back to Sapporo to rest up back at our hotel. Our plan for dinner was to visit one of the several ramen areas to have miso ramen. Miso ramen is a specialty of Sapporo. The typical soup is rich and oily and usually made with pork bones and flavored with a miso tare. What is also unique about Sapporo miso ramen is that they would use a wok to first stir fry some vegetables in lard, then add hot stock, which deglazes the wok and adds a nice caramelization flavor profile to the soup.
There are over 1000 ramen shops in Sapporo, but there are two famous ramen streets where over 17 ramen shops are concentrated. One is called Ganso Ramen Yokocho (original alley) and another is called Shin Ramen Yokocho (new ramen alley). They are both a few blocks of each other. Our target for dinner was Ganso Ramen Yokocho.
However, prior to going to one of the ramen alleys, we stopped by Kinotoya Bake shop which is famous in Sapporo for their cheese tarts at the JR Sapporo Station.
There are several Kinotoya Bake shops in Sapporo, including one that is at Sapporo’s Chitose airport.
There is a constant line formed in front of the shop. You can literally smell the butter, eggs, and sugar from the non-stop baking and churning out of these delicious bites.
I’m not much of a dessert person, but after one bite, I was floored away by how good this was. すごい (Amazing)!!! The cheese tart was buttery and creamy, yet light. The Hokkaido milk turns out some of the best tasting cheese cake, but this one in particular was special. More importantly, it was not too sweet nor too heavy. I do not know how they make this with a crunchy shell and a cloud-like center. We intended to buy a half-dozen for dessert to eat after dinner, but could not wait and we all ended up having one before dinner. Needless to say we ended up buying a dozen more right away.
From the JR Sapporo, we made our way to back to Susukino area. The Ganso Ramen Yokocho is hidden away between two narrow streets. A big sign highlights that you arrived.
The alley is tiny, with a width where only about two people can pass by each other. There are over 17 ramen stalls in a two block radius. Most of the stores can only sit 6-8 people . This is a true literal definition of a hole in a wall. The very first restaurant above is Aji no Karyu which has a claim to fame on Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservation. However, I decided to pass on it as the broth looked lite in color and not a lot of depth from what I saw on the show and further, trip advisor rating was pretty mediocre.
We looked around and settled at Teshikaga Ramen, which had both miso ramen and also a famous gyokaishibori shoyu ramen (a soy sauce based seafood flavor). It is a couple of restaurants down from Aji no Karyu.
I also read that they sell an instant version of the gyokaishibori shoyu ramen on some of the Japanese retail sites, which I saw they proudly displayed on the side wall of the restaurant.
The restaurant was tiny and only had 8 seats. With our party of 6, we almost took up the whole space. The chef had music of Elvis and Bee Gee’s.
You have a front roll view of the tiny kitchen and the chef at work. You can see the charcoal grill in the photo above where he will sear the charsui and kakuni if you order the “big pork” ramen. He is currently at work with stir frying and deglazing the plan with the broth, which is a signature of Sapporo miso.
For our boys, we choose the charsui and kakuni ramen, which basically was their number one and had it with miso flavored. You will see the chef grill each piece of pork before placing onto of the ramen bowl. The broth was surprisingly lighter than I thought it would be. The pork was tender and the my boys really liked it. The noodles were thin and slightly curled.
We got the fish based shoyu fish based ramen for my daughter. It had nice light but rich taste and a hint of bitterness, in a good way.
My wife and I choose the seafood ramen miso ramen, as we cannot get enough of the Hokkaido seafood. You get snow crab legs, scallops, charsui, soft-boiled egg, wood ear fungus, sliced onion, and a very flavorful ground pork. The really think Sapporo style ramen needs the wok deglaze technique as it helped to add some complexity to the broth.
While none of the ramen options blew us away, they were all very satisfying and delicious.
After dinner we went to check out some of the night scenes of Sapporo to walk off all the calories from the cheese tart and the ramen.
We walked along Odori park and walked all the way to the lighted up tower. You can actually pay to go to the observation deck of the tower to view the day or night scenes of Odori Park.
At the base of the tower are stalls that make up a small beer garden. You can get some small bites and a Sapporo beer while enjoying being out in the open.
We decided to head back to our hotel and rest for the night. Along the way we found the Sapporo Clock Tower, which is a wooden structure that is a well-known tourist attraction. It’s one of the last few serving Western-style buildings in Sapporo.
Overall, it was a packed filled day but the next day was even more packed, as we would head to Otaru and Shatokan enroute to our highlight of our trip, Zaborin, our favorite ryokan.