Kiku

Great place for the full dining experience. We walked in late one night on a Saturday, and took counter seats - there were 3 chefs behind the counter. We were not sure what to order, so started with the Today’s Special for sashimi, which included sea urchin (uni), together with scallop (hotate), sal...mon, tuna (maguro), crab (kani), hamachi, ark shell, prawn. As soon as you sit at the counter, the chef positions two plates and prepares it with ginger and wasabi, on which your order will be placed directly. Hot green tea and warm handtowels are also brought by the waitress, a middle-aged lady who kept an eye on our tea and refilled before I even noticed. Our chef, the one directly in front of us, prepared our order – I was craning slightly over the counter to see how the chef worked, the knives were furiously sharp and they are very quick. The set came beautifully presented. The sashimi quality was very fresh – the uni was better than a premium box we had purchased at the Nijo market earlier that day. From the first dish, we went on to order fatty tuna (otoro), another scallop, and squid. The uni, hotate and otoro was great. The uni was sweet and buttery, like savoury cream, and a rich orange in colour. The hotate had a firmness when you first bite into it, but then dissolves into softness with a juicy sweet and salty taste. The otoro melts in your mouth. I'm not typically adventurous in sashimi, but here it all tasted very good. Quite apart from the food itself, was how the skill in how our chef prepared them, and the freshness of the ingredients. Be prepared though, this place perhaps isn't for the squeamish – we had some of our dishes prepared fresh in front of us, like the scallop and the squid. However, the experience was fantastic - rather than feeling we were two anonymous diners who walked in late one Saturday night, I felt like a VIP. Kikuzushi is a great little sashimi restaurant – there are three small private rooms in addition to the counter seats - in the Susukino district. Their menu has English translation, which was very helpful. You do have to spend a little time to find it, as from the outside it is only named in Japanese. Don’t be afraid to ask restaurants where it is, we did that! The best way to find it is to locate it on Google maps, and then when you walk there, use the Grand Taiyo Building (in which it is located) as a landmark. The Grand Taiyo is next to the Ramada hotel. There are only 2 sushi restaurants there (the rest are ramen noodlehouses) so just ask any of the storeowners where Kikuzushi is. The price is reasonable given its quality – the “Today’s Special” was around 3800 yen, and each sashimi a la carte from 300 – 800 yen. We spent about 8,800 yen. It opens from 5pm to 2am. If you are staying at the Mercure Sapporo (where we had stayed), it is about 5 mins walk away.

Visited February 2011