Sumibiyaki Butadon "Kukai （空海）" | Soba & Pork Bowl Restaurant | Sapporo

Beef bowl is a popular dish in Japan, while butadon （豚丼）or pork bowl is one of the famous local dishes mainly eaten in Obihiro, eastern part of Hokkaido.

Today I'll show you "Kukai （空海）", a butadon restaurant in Sapporo.

There are two kinds of seats in the restaurant; seats at a table (left) or tables on tatami floor (right).

This is a menu↓ They serve butadon and HOME-MADE soba.
As for butadon, you can choose the size of bowl, and parts & amount of pork.

"Sangenton（三元豚）", a brand of pork and "Bincho Tan（備長炭）", the most fragrant charcoal is used for their butadon! Sounds perfect♪ I love CHAR-GRILLED pork!

Their another main dish is soba or buckwheat noodles. They use buckwheat produced in their constructed farmers in Horokanai, a famous buckwheat production site in Hokkaido, and mill the buckwheat by themselves EVERY DAY day and make soba.

There are two kind of soba; Jyuwari (100%-buckwheat soba), and Nihachi (80%-buckwheat-and-20%-flour soba).

This Jyuwari↓ has lighter color than Nihachi because shells of buckwheat are removed.

While this Nihachi↓ is made with both milled buckwheat and its shells.

You can see the difference of the colors but actually they smell and taste really different, too!
Nihachi (left)  Jyuwari (right)

Both of them are in the Inaka-soba category, in which the noodles are tough and elastic.
Nihachi (left)  Jyuwari (right)

Next, we ate butadon!
This is butadon (back rib)↓ Yummy x 2!!!

This is butadon (loin)↓
The sweet soy sauce flavor really suits the char-grilled pork!!

Tsukemono or pickles come with butadon, but we ordered miso soup, too.

Well, well, well,let's compare with both parts.
Back rib (left)  Loin (right)

I usually like back ribs better than loins because I love the taste of pork fat, but the rib in the restaurant are a little bit thin....... while the loin is thick enough and has some fat! So I recommend better the loin bowls in the restaurant!

If you cannot choose which is better, order both of the bowls! Hahaha!

But if you want to eat both soba and butadon, they serve a set of soba and mini butadon!

After eating soba, we enjoyed soba-yu (water left in the of after soba has been boiled) mixed with soba soup!

We enjoyed the lunch today, too♪

■Where is Sumibiyaki Butadon "Kukai （空海）" ?

(*The restaurant will move to Eniwa city on August 1st)

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■Tour guide information■

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