Putting down a Hāngi at the Brick

Last night the community was treated to a traditional style Maori hangi at the Brick. People trickled in all afternoon, inspecting the coals and pile of mud in anticipation.

Games of frisbee and cricket were played on the street and many beers were drunk. Until there was movement ... shovels ... and the unveiling began.

This was my first experience of a Hangi ... I wasn't too sure what to expect as they were shoveling away the dirt, but then came sheets of cloth ...

Followed by layers of heshen sacks.

Then wire baskets were removed from the steaming pit. The top one containing potatoes and cabbage. As the next baskets were being removed, it was as if they were holding little treasures. Each one clearly containing something different, but everything was wrapped in Fuku leaves, which are a type of wild plant that has a stem like rhubarb and giant lilly like leaves.

The first basket to be attacked contained the potatoes and cabbage.

I did manage to take a plate and chopsticks from the pile, but somehow completely failed to get any salad at all ... must have consciously been saving more room for meat!

Oh, the meat. Whole chickens with stuffing, roast lamb with rosemary and roast pork with pumpkin, cinnamon, thyme & sugar.

Lucky I saved all that room with no salad, as the first plate disappeared in a flash, and seconds ... then thirds, soon followed.

The roast chicken was so moist, steamed under the earth with so much natural flavor. The pork and pumpkin combo just perfect. The roast lamb, ahhhh, reminds me of home. The potatoes, would have like to have some sour cream and chives to slather on top, they were just lacking any character - possibly due to the fact they are last seasons harvest ... We are eagerly awaiting delicious new season Kutchan potatoes. But the cabbage, oh ... my ... goodness. This humble little vegetable was the standout amongst the crowd for the whole night. The core was removed and filled with butter and Mae Ploy Thai Green Curry Paste. The cabbage was meltingly tender, oh-so-buttery and with a nice hint of spice. Genius!

When Waza - Niseko's resident Kiwi - is on point, he has some moments of sheer genius. Take his bagels for instance .... don't even get me started on the Jalapeno popper bagels.

Let's hope we can convince Waza to make this a regular thing during Summer.

the Brick

Open Tuesday nights in Summer for darts and burgers

Open late Winter, serving kebabs, burgers and 500yen drinks

& sporadically throughout the year for random dance parties and Hangi

Kamimura pt II, The Lunchening

We have blogged Kamimura before, but we had returned to take advantage of the great lunch deal taking place over summer. Five courses for three thousand yen...bargin. We met up with the Soaring Arrow and headed over. We met the manager, Michael at the door and have a bit of a chat. Summers been going well and the lunch deal is very popular. Seated and served very quickly, we are soon enjoying the sublime taste of creamy soft egg and caviar on toast as a little taste awakener.



Next up a cute little martini glass layered with silky smoove (sic) potato puree, black truffle and veal consomme. Tasty!



The following dish perfect for the summer, Seasonal white fish crispy skinned and draped with lardo, sitting in a puddle of gazpacho, with peppery mustard greens and shaved parmesan. This is SO summer.

The last of the savoury dishes succulent roast Japanese pork with spinach, pancetta and mushrooms. Perfectly cooked still with a blush in the meat the feeling of umami ran rampent in our mouths long after the food was gone.



The finale not something you see often here, poached red rhubarb with creamy vanilla ice cream and a summer snow storm of white chocolate. Rhubarb, seriously cool.



With such a great experience I wish we had more time off over summer to return and confirm our great experience feelings were correct.

Kamimura Restaurant
1st Floor Yamashizen West
185-8 Aza-Yamada
Kutchan-cho, Hokkaido
044-0081, Japan

Telephone: +81 (0)136-21-2288
Fax: +81 (0)136-21-2288

The Brick, Hirafu.

The brick, it's just that, a big red square brick building made of small red bricks,wedged into the ground in Hirafus lower village.



Known for it's great burgers and parties, it wasn't till the end of the season we made it here, shame. Wazza the purveyor of said burgers bakes all the buns on site as well as hand making the wraps for the kebabs also on offer.
The burgers are huge, good looking affairs, and the fries are hands down the best in the village, super crispy and seasoned with pepper as well as salt.

The beef burger with the works, a real monster of a burger, only for the truly hungry.



Chicken satay burger, funky fusion.



The oh so tasty fries.

TsubaraTsubara

To drive past you wouldn’t even think that such treats could lie within; I mean it just looks like a pile of shipping containers stacked up next to a paintball field. But with an inside tip that there was much more than meets the eye to these containers we went to investigate. Soup curry is big in Japan and like I’ve said before I’m not a big fan of Japanese style curry (I’m coming round slowly) but here at TsubaraTsubara we were told, was a good thing. We peeked inside and were surprised to see the interior of a restaurant, had you somehow been magiked inside from some other place you would not know the exterior was a shipping container, and to add to our surprise all the seats were full. We were lucky enough that someone was just finishing up so with but a brief wait we were on our way.



The menu is a choose your own adventure, starting you choose the filling for the soup from five choices: chicken leg, pork and leek, prawn, all vegetables or chicken meatball. Then it’s on to your soup of choice; original or with added coconut cream, now onto additional extras from fried wonton skins (50¥) through to roast pork (300¥) with a multitude of other choices in-between. How hungry are exactly is the next question as you pick the size of your rice 140g through to 260g with the choice also of oatmeal rice, a mixed grain rice with all sorts of things in it. Lastly how hot do you want to go, this is an interesting concept as chilli is not really an acquired taste here in cabbage country, so to have a scale that goes from one to twenty with a recommended heat level of 5 is nice for someone who likes the spice.

We went through the adventure Kat having a coconut soup with chicken, additional chicken meatballs and fried garlic with a spicing of 8, myself having the original soup with pork, leek and boiled egg, additional sausage and a spicing of 8. Kat also has the oatmeal rice which is a good and a bad thing, good because it’s so tasty, bad because since then they’ve always been sold out of it leaving us craving.
My soup is tasty and flavourful, the spice heat is good (I’d like to see someone attempt the 20) as well as the pork, leek and egg there is maitake mushroom and roast capsicum, it a generous portion.



Kats soup with the addition of the coconut cream makes the taste similar to a Thai Khao soy, again it’s a generous portion and the additional meatballs, well, next time I’m going to have a bowlful of just them, they’re sooooo delicious.



I guess the moral of the story is: walk into many strange buildings because there’s delicious food in side or not all shipping containers are created equal, something like that.

Address
On the corner at the first set of traffic lights out of Hirafu towards Kutchan.

The importance of a good staff meal ...

Staff meals are fundamental to a productive happy team.  I find it a challenge being able to make something tasty, exciting and nourishing for very little cost out of things your find lying around a commercial kitchen.  Sometimes we'd even get spoilt with a dessert, like here.  

On this particular occasion, H has whipped up an omu rice.  We enjoy the omu rice we've tasted at Pomme-no-ki but homemade is just something else.  

The rice was fried with peas, negi and some soy then half covered by a paper thin omlette.  Resting on top were some crisp sliced of chicken katsu (which we use for the kids menu :)) and a delicious terriyaki Otaru bacon and mushroom mix.



As long as we're eating this well every night, or close to, you can be guaranteed we'll be a productive happy team!

Farewell Maru

When we head to Izumikyo we're usually grabbing a sandwich from Graubunden.  But then there's Maru, or the one with the white circle on the red sign. We didn't really hear much about this until later in the season, and then find out it is in fact their last season in Niseko.

We make it down one day for lunch. They have an amazing variety of lunch sets, all around 800¥ - 1200¥. Awesome! I order the grilled pork, which had a nice sticky black sauce and was served over rice and topped with an onsen egg.



Kim gets a half / half set. There's the same sticky grilled pork with onsen egg but also tempura eel. A little piece of tempura eggplant also sits on the side. Delicious.



Each set also came with a generous bowl of tsukemono (Japanese pickles) and a bowl of miso soup.

We also share another lunch set ... It's an interesting combination of baby prawns, scallops and shredded vegetables pressed together like a cake and tempura'd. We just pick all the crispy cake from a top the rice and it is superb. The sweetness of the shrimp and scallop exploding through the tangle of crispy vegetables.



We are sad to bid farewell to Maru this season, and disappointed that we only got to grace our taste buds with the pleasure of the deliciousness that is Maru only once before it left ......

Montage, Montage

The hours approaching, just give it your best
You've got to reach your prime.
That’s when you need to put yourself to the test,
And show us a passage of time,
We're gonna need a montage (montage)
Oh it takes a montage (montage)

Show a lot of things happing at once,
Remind everyone of what’s going on (what’s going on?)
And with every shot you show a little improvement
To show it all would take to long
That’s called a montage (montage)
Oh we want montage (montage)

And anything that we want to go from just a beginner to a pro,
You need a montage (montage)
Even Rocky had a montage (montage)

(Montage…montage)

Anything that we want to go from just a beginner to a pro,
You need a montage (montage)
Oh it takes a montage (montage)

Always fade out in a montage,
If you fade out, it seem like more time
Has passed in a montage,
Montage

Thanks Team America, that's just what we're gonna do with some photos from our menus this season. Some from the regular menu and some from our Chinese New Year menu.

I'm not going say for each dish how it was delicious as they all were. Maybe you'll come next season to see where we went from here.

Montage, Montage