On March 2nd I went out to Sapporo (yes, two weeks in a row) to do some more seasonal eating, Kirby shopping for my sister, and hopefully some more Starbucks hunting. Part of the inital plan was to try to get one of the Round 2 Kirby Happy Meals, but 1. my sister wanted all four and 2. McDonald’s released a statement on the first (the release day of Round 2), that due to popular demand they have sold out of Kirby Happy Meals and would thus be discontinuing the initial plan to sell for 3 weeks. Before I saw this statement, I had already ordered the Round 2 Kirbys on Mercari, but that saved me the dissappointment of going to a McDonalds and seeing they didn’t have any left. It’s actually incredible how fast they popped up on Mercari, and how fast they were selling out.
Anyway, my first order of business after getting off the bus at 10:30am was head to Parco to first get Starbucks and also to re-check out the Kirby Pop-up shop selection. The Starbucks stop was partially to see if they had the magenta sakura part 1 Stanley my boyfriend’s friend wanted, and also to try the Strawberry Lavender Latte. It actually came out a few months ago, back at the end of fall/start of winter season, and I have been meaning to try it for a while, but either haven’t had the opportunity or thought it was out of season (when it first came out they advertised it, but after that just kept it on the menu). After buying a couple items for the friend last time, I got a couple free drink coupons (sadly lost one…), so it was a great opportunity to use the one I had. The coupon is good for up to 1100 yen (which is actually quite a lot, even for a Starbucks drink), and so I took the chance the get a Venti size, and my usual non-fat milk. The girl at the register when presented with the coupon, immediately took a very humble expression and tone (she was very friendly to begin with), and said “Thank you so much!”, and actually tried to get me my money’s worth, asking if I wanted any other add ons. From adding a bit of sweetness with a pump of vanilla syrup, to asking if I wanted the more expensive plant-based milks (non-fat is a free substitute), she really was super nice about it, but I declined her offer.
Officially, the drink is supposed to have strawberry, lavender, and bergamot tea paired with milk, topped with whipped cream, honey, and strawberry lavender powder (I did see them powder a pink thing before capping it). Like other opinions I head, I have to agree, it was very yummy! The flavors blended together really well, and the strawberry was not overpowering, but more of just another flavor in the latte. I’m not sure where the lavender itself went, but overall, it was a nice warm, creamy drink for a cold snowy day. Plus, maybe it’s a good thing I waited to get it until now, because for sakura season, all their hot drinks come in a sakura patterned cup!
I headed upstairs, and went back to the Kirby pop-up shop. The goods were all mostly the same, just slightly rearranged for some reason. While waiting for my sister and mom to decide what they wanted, I went across the floor to the Ghibli store (Donguri Kyouwakoku), and saw they had a Totoro sakura collection. Gosh it was so pretty and cute! A weird thing I experienced was I was just looking at stuff, and an employee came up to me and said “Otsukare-sama desu”. I was completely taken by surprise because usually this is a greeting used at work along the very vague lines of “Good work today” or “You’ve worked hard”, and never have I heard this said to me while window shopping before. At a loss of what to do, I just kind of stared at her, which probably also caused her confusion, and she ended up walking away. That was a very interesting experience.
I did some shopping on behalf of my my mom and sister, and headed towards Akarenga Terrace to grab some lunch. On the way, I passed through the underground passageway, which sometimes has small businesses selling their goods. This time around, I guess there was some kind of sweets campaign, because there were quite a few small businesses selling sweets and baked goods, including many muffins and brownies that looked pretty enticing. I ended up buying an apple cinnamon brownie from this Ema Brownie shop, which makes eggless, flourless, milkless brownes from rice flour and tofu. Pretty cool, and the flavor especially sounded interesting. I hate having the opportunity right in front of me to buy all of these…
I had it as a snack a few days later, and overall, it was good. It had a mostly cakey, slightly crumbly texture, but was a nice level of chocolatey. There were apple slices, but they didn’t really stand out among the strong chocolate flavor. The flavor label also failed to mention there were a decent number of pecans, and though I’m not a huge nut person, at least I can eat them…
My planned lunch spot of the day was Enoteca D’oro, an Italian spot on the 3rd floor of Akarenga Terrace. Lately I’ve been craving pizza. At first I was thinking of getting a lunch set, but then I figured I didn’t find the extra suff worth the set money. I was going to get something else, but when I showed my parents that they had this crab pizza, my mom encouraged me to get it because it’s unique. Shoutout to them for the treat!
Apparently the crab in question is hairy crab from Kushiro (the pizza is part of the prefecture produced ingredient series), and besides that, comes with cherry tomatoes, mozzarealla, and grana padano cheese. As a fresh tomato fan on pizza, I liked the pop of juice from the cherry tomatoes, and there was a decent amount of crab (I feel like the menu picture had more?), but otherwise was a pretty simple, straightforward pizza. The crust was crispy and chewy, and I think it had the perfect amount of cheese. My only complaint would be that the subtle taste of the crab got a bit lost amid the strong cheese flavor, so what I found best was I ate the crab first, which was very sweet and tender, and then ate a bite of pizza. I liked all the ingredients individually, but it might not have worked out the best as pizza. Overall everything tasted good though. I wish the pizza were a bit bigger…
I made a quick pit stop at Jupiter to buy some things for my boyfriend, and then made my way to Daimaru’s basement to see if LeTao has slices of their new strawberry double (because they didn’t start having them last time). Luckily, they did! I took a few pictures of the selection, and prayed that one of the three double would still be there when I come back to purchase.
My main Daimaru objective was to eat Afternoon Tea’s newest parfait, as their newest campaign started February 29th. I think the ideal time to come to Afternoon Tea is right before 2, because they start their Afternoon Tea sets at 2, which theoretically means the people aiming for the sets will start coming at 2. I did arrive a bit past 2, to see a mini line, but it did move pretty quickly. I knew what I wanted, but as I was finalizing my decision looking at the menu, I noticed the strawberry earl grey parfait is coming back on April 11 after this campaign is over. I found it wild that the previous parfait is also going to be the next parfait, but I digress…
I settled on the seasonal Sakura and Cream Cheese Parfait, and made it a drink set and added the seasonal Peach Earl Grey Tea iced. The parfait is supposed to include sakura jelly, sakura been paste, a honey pickled grapefruit, cream cheese whipped cream, strawberry and cream cheese ice cream, a sakura whipped cream, strawberries, and a matcha warabi mochi topping. The tea is described as having a ceylon candy taste blended with orange peels, with a bit of sweet peach to create a refreshing earl grey. I had my tea straight, with no milk or sugar or anything.
My initial parfait impression was the sakura parts were all slightly flowery, which is to be expected. There was this white chocolate crunch on top, which was basically like white chocolate bark, and the sakura whipped cream on top and the bean paste and jelly inside were pretty good. I tried eating the actual flower petal this time around, but it had been pickled, and was very salty. The strawberries were juicy and sweet. The grapefruit was a surprise, and was just a bit sour. There was some mildly flavored granola, which added a nice crunch, and mixing the matcha powder-covered warabi mochi was a much better idea than eating all the dry powder straight up. I’m pretty sure the strawberry gelato is the same as their other parfaits, and the new thing this time around was the cream cheese ice cream. It was creamy for sure, definitely had a bit of a cheese funk, but otherwise was actually pretty good. The tea was ok, mostly tasted like tea (duh), with just a hint of peach flavoring. Maybe it was because it was iced, but I really needed an iced drink after sweating a lot with walking around indoors with thick layers so much. This is the winter dillemma…
With about a little over an hour left to just buy all of my to-go stuff for home, I headed back downstiars to LeTao to get my cakes. Unfortunately, an hour later, they had sold out of both of what I wanted…I asked the guy working if they had anymore of the cakes that just weren’t in the case, and after he checked in the back, turns out, they had plenty of stock in the back. Huzzah! I got a Hokkaido Ichigo Fraise Double (486 yen), the seasonal strawberry double, and a Strawberry Milk Shortcake (583 yen), another current seasonal cake. The Double this time around is supposed to have two main layers: the first is a rare cheesecake using marscapone cheese from Italy and whipped cream, and a strawberry baked cheesecake layer using Hokkaido strawberry puree. The shortcake has a layer of Hokkaido milk and marscapone cheese milk mousse, a strawberry mouse, and a strawberry sponge cake.
The strwberry double fromage was very creamy overall, and if all the layers were eaten together, it created a mainlycheesecakey, slightly strawberry fluffy and airy cake texture. The very top and outer layer was a whipped cream with some kind of pink crumb, the second layer was that rare cheesecae which was super light and creamy, the third was the baked chesecake which was denser and had a very strong strawberry flavor on its own, and the bottom was more of just a cake cheesecake. Very yummy!
The shortcake overall was very fluffy and airy. The strawberry flavor itself wasn’t too strong, but more on the subtle side. I did try eating the layers on their own, but the mousse layers mostly tasted like very light cream layers, and the cake layer was mostly, well, cake. Overall, it was a cute and nice dessert though.
There was this other seasonal Luxurious Strawberry Spring Color Fromage Shortcake, but that was 900 yen per slice, and seemed like a more normal shortake with a bunch of fancy strawberries on top, so I decided against that one.
I stopped by a McDonald’s to get some take-out for my boyfriend, and then headed over to The Tea for my boba of the day to-go on the bus. Read about my boba here!
After that, I waited for the 4 o’clock bus home!
To report, after popping in some Starbucks (mostly the same as last time though), none had the magenta Stanley, and because the online store hasn’t restocked, it might be safe to say that there might be no more hope…
This will most likely (barring any weird circumstances) be my last Sapporo outing until I head to the airport a few weeks later!
Japan Excursions 
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