Category: City: Hakodate

Exploring the Donburi Alley in Hakodate

Donburi is a simple Japanese dish consisting in a bowl of rice and something on top. That “something” can be beef, pork, even a cutlet and, of course, seafood. Donburi restaurants specializing in seafood are usually found inside fish markets around Japan. This post is about what you can find in the Donburi Alley (Yokocho) in the Hakodate Morning Market.

The Hakodate Morning Market is located next to the Hakodate railway station and is a very popular touristic spot. All around there are seafood restaurants, but one entire alley inside the market is dedicated to donburi.

The doburi sets available are displayed on the shop windows through plastic models. It is a cornucopia of seafood.

The visit

When I visited the market I realized that the offering across the restaurants was quite similar. I settled for the diner on the right of the entrance because they had a massive tuna bowl.

Above how the bowl appeared on the menu and below what I got.

The rice bowl came with 10 slides of tuna sashimi and four additional slices of the sought-after o-toro, the fatty part of the tuna. And finally, on top some minced tuna (negitoro) with what I believe was a quail egg yolk.

The donburi came with miso soup and some pickles.

It was delicious.

I also had four boiled Hokkaido oysters. These were excellent, are very meaty, not usually found outside Japan. For 250 yen each, they were a bargain.

The check

The doburi set was 3,000 yen plus taxes. You can spend more maybe if you add sea urchin (uni). Including the oysters and the 8% tax I spent 4,320 yen (39 USD), not cheap, but this was one of the most expensive donburi sets available in the alley, because of the o-toro. Yet, in Hong Kong or elsewhere I could have easily spent twice as much for that quantity of tuna sashimi including the prized o-toro. On the other hand, the oysters were a bargain and I would certainly recommend anyone to stoke up on oysters when in Hakodate.

Where in Hakodate:
Michishige – Donburi Alley
No. 9-15 Wakamatsu
Address in Japanese: 北海道函館市若松町９番15号

See this brochure in English from the official Donburi Yokocho website.

See also the map below.

How much sashimi can you get in a Japanese izakaya with 20 USD? (Hint: A lot.)

Izakayas are my favorite everyday dining venues when travelling in Japan (with the only big caveat that customers are usually allowed to smoke inside, that’s a minus for me, someone might enjoy it). I have seen the term “izakaya” translated as “Japanese pub”, but I think it is not enough. Sure, people go to the izakayas after work to drink with colleagues and friends and this is what happens with pubs. But izakayas also offer extensive food menus that are unheard of in typical British-style pubs. I prefer to think of izakayas as a crossbreed between pubs and Italian “osteria”, an informal restaurant serving home-cooked dishes.

I like izakayas because they give you a chance to sample a variety of local dishes and they are usually good value for money. (But beware: I have noticed the tendency outside Japan to use the term izakaya to indicate high-end small restaurants inspired by Japanese cuisine and they are not cheap).

The Visit

The specific izakaya I am describing is located in Hakodate, a city in Hokkaido. Hakodate, by the way, is a nice destination, off the beaten path for international tourists, with one of the most breathtaking view in Japan from the mount bearing the same name. But even if you will never visit Hakodate, what I am presenting applies pretty much to all izakayas you might find in secondary cities (or outside main touristic areas). Most of the times you will find this kind of venues nearby stations or business districts as they cater to local workers. They might not have an English menu (they had one in this particular izakaya), but their menus are routinely enriched by detailed images of the food, so you can order even without any command of the Japanese language.

I found this izakaya, called Ikataro and belonging to a group with venues in other parts of town, in the Honcho district, nearby the Goryokaku-Koen-Mae station of the Hakodate tram. You can look it up here on Google Maps. It is a district full of this type of dining venues and my impression is that these places are less expensive and more interesting than the establishments near Hakodate station that seem to cater to tourists for the most part.

To my surprise they had an English menu, so ordering was easy. I wanted sashimi. Izakays, typically, do not serve sushi, but they do stock sashimi that Japanese like as a snack when drinking after work. I went for a sashimi platter suggested for 2 or 3 people and I added a couple of other small dishes.

The sashimi platter was majestic. They had all the usual suspects: tuna, salmon, squid, arc shell, scallop, a couple of bites of amber jack, omelette and even a couple of rice balls filled with cooked salmon. This bounty went for arond 2000 yen including taxes (that would be less than 20 USD. Difficult to beat this value for money.

The other small dishes were some cod roe (an essential Japanese ingredient, in this case raw, with a strong salty and sweet flavor) and some squid fermented with its innards (vaguely resembling a pudding, it is called shiokara in Japanese). The squid is one of the original catch of Hakodate and should not be missed.

The check

Overall, I ended up paying 3769 yen (equivalent to around 35 USD), including a cover charge of 300 yen, a soft drink reasonably priced at 250 yen, the two additional dishes and the 8% service charge. A few years back I had a similar experience in another secondary Japanese city, Tottori, just to confirm the pattern. I also had great experiences in izakayas in Tokyo, but they were way more expensive for the fresh seafood. Would I go back? While this was a very normal, run of the mill izakaya I was very pleased and I would certainly go back to try more dishes. I would also like to explore further the dining scene in the Honcho district of Hakodate.

Where in Hakodate
Izakaya Ikataro (or Ikatarou)
4-15 Honchō, Hakodate-shi, Hokkaidō 040-0011
Address in Japanese: 〒040-0011 北海道函館市本町 4−15
See Google Maps. Tip: take the tram to Goryokaku-Koen-Mae.