Hokkaido’s culinary transformation: from food bowl to gourmet

Anywhere outside Japan these days, mention the word Hokkaido, and images of powder snow immediately leap to mind.Mention Hokkaido to a Japanese, however, and the image has always been of food. Particularly seafood and dairy products.

But just as the ski scene is undergoing a revolution in Hokkaido, so too the local food industry is seeing its own dramatic transformation. In the past, Hokkaido was always seen by Japanese city dwellers as the ‘food bowl’ of Japan - where, because of its wide open spaces, beef cattle had room to grow, dairy herds produced milk and butter and processed cheese, abundant fish and crab species - like the huge Taraba crab pictured - were popular in mainland markets, and potatoes and corn were words synonymous with the northern island.

Today, the food association is still strong, but the emphasis has shifted dramatically from that of a bulk provider to the masses, to the home of a thriving gourmet culture that is not only attracting the attention of Japanese epicureans, but also starting to make a name on the world stage. All over the island, creative visionaries are quietly downsizing all of the broad food categories into stunning little pockets of award winning culinary excellence, and demand for their produce is soaring in the highest priced restaurants and hotels throughout Japan.

Specialist Tokachi cheeses are now winning Gold Medals in European competitions; superb sausages and hams are being made from pigs fed on whey; beer-fed, massaged beef from Biratori, Mitsuishi and Shiraoi is now rivalling Kobe and Matsuzaka on the mainland; organic production of specialist vegetables has hit great heights; and even shellfish have started, for the first time in Japan, to have ‘brand’ names, like the much sought-after Kakiemon oysters from Akkeshi, near Kushiro. Even some Hokkaido wines are beginning to emerge as possibilities for the future, with a lot of work going into viticulture development, though it is probably safe to say their time has not yet come.

Closer to home in Niseko, observant visitors will have noticed that the town logo for Kutchan is a skiing potato. When the snow is not covering all of those broad acre fields around Kutchan, the whole countryside is wall-to-wall potato crops. But now, instead of the one standard product, growers have some 30 exotic varieties of seeds to choose from, and demand for some - like the Inca no Mezame, a small, nutty flavoured potato said to resemble the original South American product - makes them hard to obtain locally.

Ezoshika, the hardy Hokkaido deer, is also now being farmed for the first time in the Hidaka region, and chefs are finding ways of turning the healthy, but difficult to use, meat into exquisite venison steaks, pates and terrines.
Niseko visitors are fortunate to have culinary geniuses of the calibre of Noriko Masubuchi (Wine & Food Bar Dragon), Yuichi Kamimura (Kamimura) and Harada-san (Hidden Kitchen Kame), whose creations show the best of what Hokkaido has to offer.  No-one should leave Niseko without sampling Noriko-san’s venison.