札幌 sapporo restaurant: bowls over broadway
I will always have a soft spot for Sapporo Restaurant. This absolutely ordinary ramen shop, just north of Times Square, was my initial encounter with New York City noodling as a teenager. Like a first girlfriend or a first kiss, you wonder how it happened; she wasn’t particularly attractive or remarkable, and yet you rode your little high through those awkward and uninformed years more or less content with the path of least resistance. And for years thereafter, whenever I thought of ramen in New York, Sapporo would come to mind.
Eventually, you learn that your first-ever girlfriend actually blossomed into something -well, presentable – and took up part-time modeling. And that flash of recognition, of seeing her in print, puts a smile on your face if only for a brief, nostalgic moment. That too was Sapporo Restaurant, as featured in the 1997 film Sleepy Heads, a zero-budget comedy centered on expatriate Japanese slackers in New York. The movie itself was largely forgettable, but a definite “hey, I know that place!” moment would grip me whenever a scene was set in what had firmly become the only ramen shop on the Eastern seaboard as far as I was concerned.
Before the days of Ippudo and Setagaya, before Minca and well, the very existence of the East Village in the mind of this non-native non-New Yorker, there was Sapporo Restaurant. And hey, she’s still around today, serving up surprisingly decent bowls of Sapporo-style miso ramen with a sweet, even luxurious miso-based soup, generic yellow noodles courtesy of the JFC/Mutual Trading import freighter, bone-dry chashu and flavorless ground pork alongside the obligatory Hokkaido-style dash of corn.
Okay, so your first girlfriend didn’t grow up to be a stunner after all, but at least she’s a good kisser and has a fairly winning personality. At Sapporo Restaurant, it’s the soup that’s the thing.
| a hearty, sweet miso soup, ostensibly in the sapporo tradition, although not as heavy or lard-infused as anything you might find in the great north. good stuff, and commendable for a middle-of-the-road, old school ramen joint. | 7 |
| properly prepared, generic noodles will hover in the same 4 or 5 point range. not really worth discussing at this point! they are what they are. | 4.5 |
| flavorless ground pork, dry chashu, and hokkaido-inspired corn make for the weakest link in sapporo's otherwise passable bowl of titular miso ramen. | 4 |
| thick-skinned gyoza that certainly tastes like the better pre-packaged, frozen gyoza brands out there. awe-inspiring they are not, but in a pinch, they'll do. | 5 |
| sapporo restaurant's ambiance is relatively nonexistent, although a small sense of wonder hangs in the air. simply because this is ramen in times square, new york, and the history is palpable. | 4 |
| as a latter-day new york institution, sapporo restaurant is definitely to be celebrated. time will tell if this unpretentious, old-school ramen joint survives in the fast-paced, high-pressure manhattan food scene. then again, it's done fine so far! all best to them. | 5 |
152 West 49th Street tel: (212) 869-8972 | 15.5 |
That looks really thick. I would take a few plates of gyoza though.