喜来登 (Kiraito in Sapporo, Hokkaido)

0 Reviews

喜来登

The miso ramen at Kiraito in Sapporo was fine. Standard stuff with a rather un-standard mountain of fresh green onions on top. Maybe I’m in the minority for not absolutely loving this one. Again, it was fine.

The shop is filled to the brim with autographed celebrity plaques. I’m talking hundreds of the things. Many are from athletes. It should come as no surprise that a large number of Japan’s winter Olympic competitors come from the frozen north. Not a lot of ski slopes in Kyushu.

Here comes the miso ramen.

Here’s the miso ramen.

The soup is made with chicken and pork, then blended with a fishy broth. This is Hokkaido, so you can choose shoyu, shio, or miso. Everyone gets the miso. You should as well.

And then the adventure began. I was with my friend Abram, and he was down to check out a natural wine bar I like. Matilda (マチルダ) has some great wines and excellent bites of French bar food. We had already been going hard before the ramen, drinking Sapporo beers on the street and somehow wandering into an anime-themed bar with an 18-year-old Russian hostess. A couple of glasses of imported wine as a nightcap was perfect.

On the way back to our hotel, we picked a random street that led in the direction of home. Then Abram turns to me and says, “Is that JJ?” It was. A friend of ours from back in California, a part-owner of Ramen Shop, was drinking at a curbside bar. Turns out he’s out here establishing a fried chicken restaurant before returning to America. With the global pandemic, he had gotten himself stuck. Not a bad place to be for an extended period of time, though. We bought a couple of bottles of wine (natural of course) and got good and drunk. Then we hopped to another bar for more.

Unfortunately, his restaurant, Baby J Chicken, was closed that day, so we couldn’t sample the goods. Or could we. In a drunken state, JJ asked if he should fire up the fryer. The answer was easy.

So then, at two in the morning in Sapporo, we found ourselves eating some of the best buttermilk fried chicken sandwiches this side of the Mississippi. JJ worked under Alice Waters at Chez Panisse in California, so he knows all about using local ingredients. Buttermilk isn’t really a thing in Japan, so convinced a local dairy farm to sell him their “garbage water.” He ferments it in house and the end result is a must-eat sandwich if you ever find yourself on the west side of Sapporo.

Insane.

Almost as insane as the hangover the next day.

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