Welcome to the first ever installment of Dude Food; a series all about food for dudes. For the initial entry, I will be reviewing the Jingisukan I devoured in Sapporo, Japan.
Jingisukan is Japanese for Genghis Kahn. It closely resembles the format of a Korean BBQ restaurant. Customers cook their own food on a dome shaped grill at their table. The grill is supposedly shaped like a Mongolian soldier’s helmet, which they used to cook their food, thus the origin of the name.
Before I get into the mouth watering details, this might also be a good time to tell you the origins of Dude Food. Back in Columbus, my coworker Joe and I liked to share stories about the meals we conquered during lunch or over the weekend. In our discussions, it became apparent that there was a major void in the rapidly rising Columbus foodie culture. There was no place dudes could go to share about the awesome food they ate. Thus, like Ben Franklin in a thunderstorm or the Wright Brothers and their bike shop, the idea for Dude Food was born.
I was in Sapporo with my college roommate Joe (different Joe than the one mentioned above), and his friends Scott and Fumi. Scott’s family is from Sapporo, and his aunt offered to take us to her favorite Jingisukan place. So on Friday night, we trekked 30 minutes into the Suburbs of Sapporo to meet her. The place was tucked behind a large pachinko parlor and was very small, very empty and very grimy. In other words, it had all the elements of a great hole in the wall restaurant.
Now, I cannot tell you many specifics about a lot of things I ate while I was in Asia. My friends liked to order dishes and then give me vague details about what I was about to eat, even deliberately lying to me once (that’s a whole different story). Sometimes they weren’t even sure what they ordered. I ate a surprising number of things that no one could identify. Luckily, this meal was simple and to the point.
We were the only people in the place, and from what I could tell, we might have been the only patrons all week. The old man behind the counter immediately got to work. Like usual in Japan, we started with a cup of hot tea, moving up to sake. There was three feet of snow on the ground, and the sake had a nice warming bite to it. I still prefer a sake bomb from Bento Go Go over drinking the stuff straight, however. The old man fired up the dome shaped grill in front of me, letting a slab of fat melt down the sides to grease the metal. He then piled fresh chopped green onions around the bottom of the grill. The simmering onions immediately filled the small place with the aroma of fresh BBQ, something I usually only get to enjoy on summer evenings in Ohio. He handed us a plate piled high with a fine cut of lamb meat, and it was up to us to grill each morsel to perfection. What brought the whole meal together was a secret sauce. He wouldn’t tell us what was in the sauce, but it was light, sweet and definitely based in sesame. After cooking a piece of meat, you combine it with some onions, add a little bit of rice, dip if all into the sauce, and enjoy. It was heavenly red meat perfection. We also received a side of Japanese coleslaw to clear the pallet every once in a while. A taste of the slightly sour slaw dipped into the secret sauce left you drooling again for the lamb like it was your first bite.
As we left, we complemented the chef and ask him about his restaurant. He said he has owned a Jingisukan restaurant since 1958, first in Vietnam where he is from, then in Japan when he moved there in the ‘70s. I’d say he passes the 10,000 hour test.
This meal receives the Dude Food’s highest rating: Five Ron Swanson’s.
