Jac brought home four dishes – two starters to share, and a main course each. First, half a dozen ebi-gyoza, which are deep fried shrimp dumplings.

The ebi-gyoza were just OK. They were like deep fried wantans (but obviously with shrimp-only filling, no pork). Not bad, but not amazingly delicious either. I like most deep fried stuff, so they were easy enough to eat. I lost shrimps in the dipping sauce when I double-dipped after my first bite, and had to go fishing in the soy sauce to rescue them. As you can see in the innards shot, the shrimps were kind of freestyling it within their wrapper, and that’s why they tended to just pop out once I’d exposed them with my first bite.

Remember the mix-up with the agedashi tofu/eggplant the first time we ate at Sapporo? Well Jac brought home the elusive agedashi tofu for us to share. It was really good. The tofu sitting directly in the sauce was a little soggy (a result of its journey from restaurant to home) but the flavour of both sauce and tofu was lovely. I got a spoon and drank the sauce, it tasted so good. This would have been amazing eaten in the restaurant itself, served fresh and hot with the deep fried tofu covered in that light, crispy batter. And yep, that is a big pile of minced ginger sitting on the top piece of tofu.

Jac had the katsudon for her main course, which was crumbed fried chicken with fried egg and onions served on rice. I know it looks like the distant deepfried relative of Jabba the Hutt or the Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock (Why did I have to think that? Now I’m singing the Fraggle Rock theme song! Any of you remember it? Dance your cares away, worries for another day! Let the music play, down in Fraggle Rock!). Anyway (getting away from Fraggles and back to the FOOD) I tried some of the katsudon, and it was delicious! I might order that dish for myself next time. It reminded me of oyakodon, except this was made with chicken katsu. The egg and onions gave the dish extra moisture as well as flavour. Jac was starving and absolutely itching to dig in, so I had to be quick to take this photo.

I had the teriyaki chicken (yeah, I know, boring! But that’s my favourite!). The chicken itself was tender but not very saucy. Underneath the chicken, there was a good amount of sauce that was soaked up by the rice. The salad was basic and went very well with the chicken and the rice. I enjoyed it.

I can’t help it! A close-up of the chicken is a must.