Che Che's Chinese Restaurant, Kutchan

Che Che's, Shei Shei's ... I don't really know it's romanji equivalent but when you're off to Che Che's in Kutchan there's only one place you're headed. At the traffic lights past homac heading towards Niseko-cho sits this little un-assuming suburban Chinese restaurant.



Inside there’s lots of red and gold and screens partitioning parts areas of the room apart.



Kim orders a Kirin, the Gold. It’s a longneck of beer that comes with the smallest beer glass I’ve ever seen …



We start the evening off with thinly sliced pork with chilli and cucumber. Paper-thin slices of steamed pork belly are topped with a cucumber ribbon salad. It’s all drizzled with a soy dressing and chilli oil and is just delicious. The bright red chopsticks that are sitting to the side of the big white bowl are the perfect tools to attacking this delicious combo.



The chilli prawns are cooked to perfection. Plump little morsels sitting in a velvet-corn-starch chilli sauce full of ginger and spring onion. There were exactly 5 little green peas sitting on top.



But the crab omlette had exactly 6 little green peas sitting on top. The omlette itself was paper thin, encasing a mountain of sweet crabmeat. It was all swimming in a pool of some silky brown sauce that all seemed to work really well together.



Oh, the egg soup! I do love a good soup … This one a peppery broth laced with ribbons of egg and black fungus. It’s a big bowl, but we have no problem finding the bottom.



I always manage to save just a little room for dessert. The specialty here is apricot kernel sweet tofu. A generous spoon of the sweet curd is sitting in a little syrup. There is a nice marzipan taste that lingers in the mouth and it’s topped with a few slices of rockmelon, 3 tiny little ju-jubes a few red beans and a sprig of mint.



It’s kinda cool to still have a pretty decent Suburban Chinese Restaurant just down the road, even though we’re now living on the little island that is Hokkaido, way up north of Japan.

Underground dumplings, Sapporo

Fancy a quickie?? Good, me too.
As I was so sweetly just reminded I owed you all a dumpling follow up.

In pleasure town (I just don't stop loving that name) under JR tower we had just finished up at Tortilla flat and were on our wander home when we came across this little dumpling house. Far too full to give it a try we made a mental note, and the next day when we were in the area we swung back for a dumpling fix.

Wan Zhu Ji Men was the name of place with the name wrapped around smiling pig as the shop logo. They do a variety of chinese noodles, rice and dumplings, Feeling just a bit peckish we opted for just a few dumplings. No idea what the dumplings were we just pointed at few interesting ones and hoped for the best, one lot with red dumpling skins, a set of long ones and a set of standard shaped, all were fried pot sticker style, came with a good smear of chili on the side as well as Chinese black vinegar (a Chinkiang no less) to dip in and my memory tells me they were tasty as was the lychee soda we had to accompany them.









Perhaps the next time we go we'll have a Japanese speaker so we actually know what we're eating. Still it was a great place for a mid afternoonish snack and they sell the Chinkiang by the bottle so that's always a good reason to swing by.

Too quick???

Wan Zhu Ji Men
Pleasure town
Under Jr tower Dimaru side