Andrew C.
Yelp
Hanamaru is located in Sapporo Station, in the JR Stellar Place tower on the 6th floor, just outside of Daimaru entrance.
This is by far, the most busy restaurant in the mall, with consistently tons of people waiting outside, and more probably wandering around.
We had came here after our quick trip to Otaru, on a Monday evening. When we had "registered" for a number, we were probably over 50 numbers out from what they were calling. Holy crap ! My feet were in pain (walking too much and i had issues with my shoes) but luckily got some seats outside the restaurant after a bit. They go through the numbers pretty "quickly". Calling almost 2 numbers at a time. Still had to wait quite a bit of time but not "too bad" i guess.
We were sat down in a booth to the left of the conveyor belt circle. You can self serve and made some hot green tea at the table.
Aside from the "normal", Hanamaru also serves quite the "unique" items that we've never had/seen in before in our local sushi places, even the high end ones. They also have juice boxes circling around on the belt as well, which is kind of funny. The normal was tamago, sake (salmon), amaebi (sweet shrimp), chutoro. The "unique" was cod sperm sac, sea squirt, and salmon roe sac.
FYI - wasabi is already in the sushi.
Tamago was fairly decent. Nice and sweet.
Amaebi was normal. Can't say much about it.
Chutoro was night and day compared to one my friend had tried in Otaru. This was much better !
Salmon roe sac was interesting. Despite the "size", it was much less salty than "normal" ikura. I was a bit scared at first because a YouTube video showing something similar was quite potent in taste. Overall, was quite mild.
Now the not so pleasant....
Sea squirt ... so this was weird... it had a very weird texture and flavor.. Now im a bit thankful my bestie and I didn't try this in Korea 3 years ago because majority of it would be "wasted"
Cod sperm sac.... Not only does it look weird... oh my god it tastes weird.. only thing i can say is... "CREAMY".....
Being foreigners, obviously we didn't know what we SHOULD be eating there but we made it as a chance to try things we don't have. During the course of the dinner, the chef's in the middle makes noise and commotion before having "specials" put out. You raise your hand signaling you want it. It was a bit weird cuz you can tell they are looking AT YOU and seeing if you are interested. XD One of the items being chutoro. I think eventually, if you wait long enough, everything on the menu will show up one way or another. I felt bad sitting there and the sea squirt and the ... other... thing.. kind of killed it for me. Lol
Price is fairly decent over all. Definitely a higher quality conveyor belt sushi place.