Among other things, Hokkaido is known for the quality of its local dairy. A nice side-effect of this: ice cream shops are everywhere here.
Though you can find cheese tarts all across Japan (and across the world — at least a couple places have opened in Toronto that serve these things in the last few years), they’re originally from Hokkaido.
Soup curry is one of those local dishes that you pretty much have to try; it’s a Hokkaido specialty that features a spice-packed, long-simmered soup crammed with veggies and meat, and served with rice on the side.
Well, regardless of whatever else I do/see in Sapporo, I’m already incredibly glad that I came here if only for the ramen at Amewa Yasashiku.
I might have gone a little bit overboard with the ramen in Tokyo, so I made a conscious decision to avoid ramen in Sendai. As much as I love ramen (which is a lot, clearly), there’s so much great food in Japan to try.
But I obviously couldn’t leave without having at least one bowl. I mean, what do I look like, a maniac?
I mentioned in a previous post that I took a sightseeing boat from Matsushima that wound up at Shiogama.
Among other things, Shiogama is known for being one of the busiest fishing ports and processors of seafood in Japan. A pleasant side effect of this is that Shiogama boasts one of the highest concentrations of sushi restaurants in the whole country.
I mentioned in an earlier post that there are a couple of dishes that are specialties in Sendai. One of them is gyutan, or grilled beef tongue, which I quite enjoyed.
The other is zunda, a sweet, bright green soybean paste that’s traditionally eaten with mochi.
I’m not sure where I just ate. I was trying to eat at Taimeshi Kotobukiya, a Michelin-rated restaurant that serves Japanese cuisine, and that has an affordable lunch special.
There are about a million Choco Cro locations in Sendai (or is that St. Marc Cafe? The sign says both, but “Choco Cro” is clearly bigger). Eventually, after passing one for twentieth time and seeing the display of chocolate croissants outside of the store, my curiosity got the better of me. I had to check it out.
I had a bit of an ordering hiccup at Tonkatsu Katsusei, a Michelin-rated tonkatsu restaurant in Sendai. The Michelin connection made me think they’d either have an English menu, or photos I could point at. They had neither.