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Moving feasts – Niseko’s summer food van favourites

By 30th September 2020July 30th, 2021Articles, Food & Restaurants

While Niseko is famous for its restaurants, just as thriving is its food van dining scene.

 

Over summer dozens of mobile kitchens load up on the freshest local ingredients and head to festivals and other events, or often just picturesque road-side stops, to serve customers their hearty fare – always fresh, delicious and delivered with a smile.

PIKININI

You’ll find the delightfully illustrated Pikinini van either at events or in its street-café garden home on the main road running through Niseko Town throughout summer. Pikinini’s pita bread pockets filled with local seasonal vegetables and additive-free meats are best described as the ultimate Niseko soul-food. Operators Kimitaka and Rie Ohashi have both devoted time in developing nations as Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers including Papua New Guinea, where the inspiration for the name of their van came from.

“The people we met left a deep impression on us because although they were poor, they were always happy,” Kimitaka-san says. “‘Pikinini’ means ‘child’, and embodies the idea we need to pass on the earth’s rich natural environment to future generations. We believe eating healthy and delicious food contributes to a peaceful world in which everyone smiles. Pikinini is our contribution to creating a happier society.”

YY DINER

With a simple menu of three core burgers – hamburger, cheeseburger and home-smoked bacon burger – and a few variations dependent on the produce of the season, a humble hamburger never tasted so good. After working at a range of Niseko restaurants since moving to Niseko in 1998, Makoto “Michael” Okaichi decided to buy a food van so he could set up shop wherever he liked on any given day in Niseko’s great outdoors.

There isn’t one secret ingredient that makes YY burgers so good – it’s the whole package. Michael smokes the bacon himself, uses only 100% grass-fed beef for the patties, whips up his own special sauce, and of course sources tomato and lettuce direct from local farms. The buns are baked by Niseko’s oldest bakery, Saito Seipan, who makes the dough with Hokkaido wheat and Mt Yotei spring water before baking in a giant old 1960s-era oven – and lightly toasted before being served warm to customers.

INSTAGRAM: @YYDINER

KLASS KITCHEN

The first time you come across Klass Kitchen you’ll be drawn by the eye-catching artwork and fun, festive vibe – but the second time you’ll draw a beeline to it for the food. More than a van serving hot snacks, it’s literally a restaurant on wheels. Everything on the menu is 100 per cent handmade from raw ingredients in a production kitchen – from gnocchi made with Niseko potatoes right down to the brioche buns and tomato sauce on gourmet burgers.

It’s a labour of love and dream come true for Australian owner-chef and long-time Niseko resident Rhys Hartigan. “We serve restaurant-quality street-style food – it’s like a fine-dining restaurant on wheels.” The yellow-rising-sun-themed artwork was lovingly hand painted by Rhys’s sister – an award-winning artist – to pay homage to its past as a Californian school bus and its new life serving fresh Hokkaido-inspired cuisine.

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