We hit Suage spontaneously on Wednesday with our best Sapporo friends, Andy and Jonna Lynn under the premise of hearing about their recent trip to Vietnam. These two are soup curry connoisseurs so we've been wanting to try their "2nd favorite soup curry" for a while. Originating here in frigid Sapporo, soup curry is exactly what it sounds like, curry in flavor and soup in consistency. I ordered the Suage soup base [they also serve a squid ink soup base] with vegetables and honey mustard chicken. I was impressed with the fantastic selection of vegetables served up at Suage: okra, carrot, potato, eggplant, cabbage, mizuna, bell pepper, asparagus, crispy fried squash [my personal favorite], and a delicious edible fungus, maitake mushrooms. The broth itself didn't move me, but admittedly, I am not a soup-curry fanatic - making me a rarity among the ex-pat crowd here in Sapporo. Although my favorite things about Suage were the hilarious restroom signs and our equally hilarious dinner conversation, when I next find myself hungry in Susukino, I'll certainly give it another shot.
[photo courtesy of Suage website]
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We noticed Shiro on our outing last weekend in Maruyama. The interior was warmly lit and modern and the specialties were yakitori [grilled meats on skewers] and wine...hence, it sounded right up our alley. We arrived, just after opening on Saturday, without a reservation and felt fortunate that there was one unreserved table available, despite its location down a long hallway and completely removed from the action of the grill. We ordered two glasses of umeshu [plum liquor] and an assortment of yakitori based on our own preferences [no internal organs] and the chef recommendations: chicken with green onion, ginger-rolled pork, lamb, sea eel with olive paste, shitake mushrooms, and garlic. The flavors and textures were delicate and every dish was cooked to perfection. Everything we tried was delicious, though only the pork and sea eel were verging on remarkable. We've had yakitori a couple of other times in Japan and, in contrast, Shiro was neither too greasy/grisly nor did we leave smelling like the inside of a barbecue. Two extra points for the friendly waitstaff and an English menu. It remains unclear whether it was the food, the ambiance, or the beer we drank beforehand that made our Shiro experience so pleasant. We will definitely return, but with a reservation near the grill and an eye toward recommended dishes, a combination that I suspect would raise our experience at Shiro from pretty good to exceptional.
[ginger-rolled pork, onion and shitake, and sea eel with olive paste at Shiro]
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