On May 18th, I went out to Sapporo to have some Afternoon Tea and see the local events that were happening, namely the annual Lilac Festival, a Korean Festival, and a Hawaiian Festival. There were quite a few things happening, and since I knew I wanted to go out this weekend, I decided to make a reservation for Afternoon Tea at ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel, since they were doing a Strawberry Fair for all of May (they’re currently doing a cherry fair). My friend also invited me to hang out in the afternoon, so it was quite a day (this same friend is the one who recommended this afternoon tea)!
I got on my usual bus, and since I got off about an hour before my Afternoon Tea reservation and was hungry, I decided to head to the 2024 Sapporo Ramen Show. I didn’t get anything last year, but this year the lineup seemed pretty good, and I figured it’d be good to have something savory before eating a bunch of sweets for basically lunch, ha! I knew the bowls wouldn’t be super big or filling, and perfect for pre-sweets. Basically how it works is that you buy a ramen ticket for 980 yen, and choose one of the ramen booths to exchange your ticket for a bowl. If you want extra toppings, you can use cash at the booth (which seems a bit counterintuitive to me, but ok). I went for just a basic bowl at a Seiten Wo Tsuke, a shop from Hiroshima that specializes in Beef Bone White Broth Salt Ramen. The ramen they were serving specifically was a truffle aroma one, and had been stewed for 10 hours. It came with a giant piece of chashu, some wood ear, green onion, and thin noodles. I went with this one because beef-based ramen seems pretty rare in Japan!
The soup was super creamy and a bit thick, and did remind me of a tonkotsu (aka pork bone) ramen, yet it had a slightly different taste than a normal tonkotsu. The giant chashu was also pretty good, not too fatty and not too lean, and I was a huge fan of the super thin noodles that were also just a bit chewy.
After that I had a brief wander around the Lilac Festival next door, which was pretty similar to last year. For a lilac festival, although there were some lilacs blooming around Odori Park, I feel like there weren’t actuallly too many lilacs in bloom that day. Oh, also, I might have seen a YouTuber I follow walking around…too shy to say anything though.
I stopped by Tokumitsu Coffee in Odori Bisse to buy some coffee beans for my dad, and since I had some time and it was on the way, I stopped by Akarenga Terrace’s current Korea Festival. There were a few food trucks, a live stage, a hanbok try-on experience, and lots of travel PR. Something interesting at one end was a fake bus stop, which apparently appeared in one of BTS’s music videos.
As 11:30 rolled around, I made my way to the hotel it was at. It’s located in the Sky Lounge on the 26th floor of the ANA Crowne Plaza Hotel, and I must say, it’s quite a a fancy hotel. They welcomed me at the door and escorted me to my table, which was right by the window and had an ok view of all the lovely buildings outside (when reserving, there’s the option for a table or counter seat, and although it was just me, I figured I’d have a better chance at a view with a table seat).
The way it works here is that you get the Afternoon Tea set, and drinks and Haagen Daaz ice cream is free flowing, or all you can drink for 2 hours, and after that you have 30 minutes to chill. The catch is that you can only order one of each per person at a time, and you order by writing what you want on an order sheet and hand it to a staff. When I sat down, they asked me for my starting drink, and I chose the mocktail made with strawberry and rosehip, with apparently collagen included too. It was very cute and yummy, with a bit of carbonation, and not too sweet. I finished that pretty fast, and put in my first order, a green tea ice cream and Grand Jasmine tea. My sweets tier and savories plate came out a bit later.
The drink menu consisted of 9 types of TWG Tea: English breakfast, black tea, darjeeling, silver moon, earl grey, grand jasmine, camomille, midnight hour tea, banilla bourbon tea, and iced tea (english breakfast only). For non-tea folks, they also have blend coffee, iced coffee, cafe latte, cappucino, decaf coffee, orange juice, apple juice, and the mocktail. They also offer palate cleansers, consisting of consomme soup, ume konbu tea, and green olives. Haagen Daaz options were vanilla, strawberry, green tea, chocolate. In total, I had 4 drinks and 4 scoops of ice cream.
As for the set menu, there were 10 types of sweets (and I got a detailed menu when I got there!). A strawberry and pistachio chocolate mousse*, strawberry and sakura bean paste roll cake*, strawberry and rose cream puff, cranberry danish, strawberry mini tart, strawberry and sakura bavarois* cream custard, rose and raspberry cream macaron, strawberry flavored gateu chocolat,sakura and lychee verrine*, and a rose flavored strawberry cream fianancier. (The asterisks are items that contain some alcohol in them, but I didn’t taste the alcohol at all.) There was also a savories plate, with a chickpea and tuna mayo dip, shrimp toast and mozzarella cheese pinchos, and a ratatouille quiche with prosciutto.
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I ate the savories first, because I am a sweets last person, and I have to say, I wasn’t a huge fan of them. They were indeed savory, almost too salty, and a bit too cheese-leaning for my taste. I did like the sweets though (emphasis makes sense, considering there was no question about the savories on the survey, ha!), and though they were all some variation of strawberry, sakura, or rose, I liked them all. Particularly, I liked the roll cake and gateu chocolat the best. There were a ton of fresh, small strawberries on various desserts, but I found them to be ok, and not too sweet.
The ice cream itself, was, well ice cream. I had two green teas, one chocolate, and one vanilla. The green tea was quite a bit muted, the chocolate was a nice chocolate, but I do think the vanilla was by far the best flavor-wise.
I ordered the Grand Jasmine, Silver Moon, and Midnight Hour. The jasmine was incredibly good, very strong and aromatic. Both of the other two are non caffeine teas, but I was interested in them because the former apparently had strawberry notes, and the latter more fruity. I quite enjoyed the Silver Moon and did taste the strawberry, but Midnight Hour tasted more like a generic fruit tea. Weirdly enough, the Grand Jasmine came out in a teabag in a pot, but the other two just in a cup.
My seat was in the far corner, which gave me privacy, but also made me the furthest person from where the waitresses were coming out. Because I had finished my first ice cream order early. a waitress who came by to clean my plates took my second ice cream order, and that came out pretty fast. At one point, I had put in my third drink and ice cream order, and ended up not having any liquid to go with my sweets. About 20 minutes had passed since I put in the order, and because I was done, I put in a fourth order of the exact thing, and it came out a decently fast after that. It seems they forgot my third order, which really wasted my time, especially because I made plans to meet up with my friend.
Anyway, now I understand why tea goes well with sweets, and was quite full when I left.
I met up with a couple friends at the Lilac Festival, and we walked around a bit before heading to the Korean Festival. After quick look around, we headed to Marui Imai where a Hawaii Fair was taking place. My friend was especially excited for Leonard’s Donuts, a famous Hawaiian chain (that also has a location in Yokohama!), that would be having a pop-up. Unfortunately, when we got there, the line had reached the point that the end of the line sign said it’d be a 60-Minute wait. That seemed a bit long, so we ended up browsing the rest of the pop-up shops, and left.
My friend was craving a parfait or ice cream, and though she did have a place in mind, we ultimately decided it was a bit ineffcient to go there in the Sapporo Station direction when we all had things to do in the Susukino area. After trying a few other cafes that had lines, we ended up at Soft Cream House in Susukino. It’s really just a stall in the wall, but hey, it’s pretty good ice cream. If we were going to a sit-down cafe, I don’t think I would have gotten ice cream since I had some earlier, but since we were there, and I’ve had Soft Cream House on my radar for quite some time, I figured I might as well.
Soft Cream house specializes in only Cremia, and it’s the only place I know of so far that offers chocolate ice cream and a chocolate cone. Since that’s unique. I went with the all chocolate version #3.
In my friend’s words, the milk one has a unique depth of flavor to it (it’s actually kind of cheesy!), but the chocolate flavor just tastes like a rich, really good chocolate soft serve. I’m a chocolate girlie so I don’t entirely mind, but if I were to go again, I’d probably get the mix one. The chocolate cone was pretty good, with flecks of chocolate in it.
Then I went to go pick up my boba for the day to drink on the ride home. Shin An Ju had sent me a coupon for the weekend, so I obviously had to use it. Read about my boba here!
Then my friend and I took the bus at 5 home together.
Japan Excursions 
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