Hokkaido - Sapporo

Greysville
I'd only known the word Sapporo from their famous beer.  It was nice to put a face to the name.  It was cold when we arrived, near the freezing mark.  Perhaps that colored my perception.  The buildings were hunkered down together, trying to find warmth in numbers.  What little light there was struggled through the clouds to get there. 

After a long day of bus riding, cheesecake eating, sake drinking and soba making I was looking forward to checking into the hotel and doing nothing.  However, when we pulled up to the hotel our guides explained that this wasn't our hotel at all, it was where we were eating dinner.  We were heading up to the top floor to eat steak.  I flashed back two years to when I met the Big Boss for the first time.

As expected, it was upper crust.  We'd be eating teppanyaki style, where the chefs cook up the steaks right in front of you.  We sat at a semi-circle table with the chefs cooking between us and the glass windows.

The view offered up night-time Sapporo.  Big Boss took the middle seat and left and right hands took their places.  A few minutes before I was deflated but once I sat in front of the grill and was given a run down of all the different steaks I started to perk up.  As usual, large bottles of sake appeared and the familiar rhythm began.

As the chefs warmed up the grill and began to cook, they placed two pieces of carpaccio in front of everyone.  It was a nice filler, something to hold us over as we waited for the main course.

Japanese beef looks different than any other.  It's due to the intricate marbling.  Somehow they raise the cattle such that the fat is evenly spread throughout the muscle.

Of the four chefs, the Big Boss and his hands got the youngest one.  The Big Boss, after a few shots of sake, was not too happy about this.  He whispered to me "Hey, how come we got the rookie chef?"  He was fixated on the rookie's technique, comparing it to that of the grey-haired chef next to him.  I wasn't worried in the least.

They made it look so easy.  They sizzled a piece of fatback, then some garlic, onions and finally the steaks.  They cooked each side a minute, cut them into smaller pieces then flipped them on their edges for a minute.  After the first piece I was ruined.  I added this to my list, the list of things I can only do in certain places.  Croissants in Paris, bagels in NY and now steak in Japan.  Yep, I'm a snob.