Soup Curry Okushiba Ekimae Soseiji in Chuo-ku, Sapporo

As part of our coverage of soup curry in Sapporo, we bring you this first-hand review of Soup Curry Okushiba Store Ekimae Soseiji; a highly respected soup curry restaurant near Sapporo Station.  To give you the short version: very high-quality food, in a small shop, over-saturated with tourists, and very long lines.

Is it worth the wait?  Read on to see for yourself.

Most locals call this Okushiba Soup Curry, but there are at least four shops in Sapporo (including the very charming Grandma’s Okushiba-chan Soup Curry in Miyanomori), and additional shops in Asahikawa, Hakodate, and Abashiri.

This particular shop is known as Okushiba Ekimae Soseiji.  Ekimae is Japanese for “in front of the station” (although this shop is more like “tonari no eki” – next to the station).  We suspect the Soseiji is in reference to Soseigawa river (which is a couple of minutes away from this shop).  The Japanese name is スープカレー奥芝商店 駅前創成寺（Soup curry Okushiba Shoten Ekimae Soseiji).

If you know Okushiba, and you know it’s near Sapporo Station, you’ll be able to find it.  The maps in this review may also help.

Once you get there, it’s time to take a look at the soup curry.

How’s that look?

That is a good looking bowl of soup curry.  We recently did a review of the Suage4 Soup Curry restaurant (which is nearby), and their soup curry doesn’t photograph nearly as well. This one: very photogenic.

To get started, you make your way over to Sapporo Station, and from there, the Sapporo Okushiba Ekimae location is across the street on the east side of the station (on the same block as the Vegas Vegas).  The shop is in the basement of a high-rise building.

From the outside, you’re looking for the entrance to “Pearl Town.”  That barber pole is a good landmark.

Pearl Town is nothing more than the name of the basement level of the Hokuren Building (which isn’t anything to notice).  The Ekimae Okushiba Soup Curry is one of a couple of restaurants in that basement (the Sapporo Ichiryuan ramen restaurant is also in that basement, and looks to be very popular as well).

One of the first things you’ll notice about Okushiba Soup Curry is the line.  A very long line.  Unnaturally long.   On the first day I tried to eat at Okushiba, the line snaked up, and then back down, the hallway and around the corner.  My guess was the wait would be at least an hour.  I decided to come back another time.

On my second visit, I came early.

The Ekimae Soseigi Okushiba store in Sapporo opens at 11 AM.  I arrived at 10:40 AM (on a weekday) – 20 minutes before they opened – and there was already a crowd; I was 10th person in line.  By the time they opened, there were maybe 30 people waiting.

It is good to be popular and successful.  They probably also want to provide a good experience for their customers.  Yet, toadapt to their over-crowded conditions, Okushiba has established a series of rules and procedures, as indicated on a series of signs, and by the direction and encouragement of the staff.

(Many of the over-crowded touristy spots in Japan have to do this.  Garaku soup curry here in Sapporo is even more popular, and has even more rules and procedures, and not a comfortable or fun experience.  We see the same kinds of “herding” behavior at shops like Lolo Coffee or Pizzeria Regalo in Osaka.  Sometimes, too much fame can make visiting your shop feel like being a cow in a factory farm.)

As you arrive at the Sapporo Station Okushiba shop, there are a series of preprinted signs, in Japanese and English (and sometimes Korean), to tell you where and how to queue up.  There are menus stacked in two piles (also in multiple languages).

On that early morning I was there, a young woman from the restaurant was in the hallway outside the shop, directing the tourists (and a few locals), passing out menus.  She then went patron to patron, taking their orders before they were even seated or the shop was open.  This presumably speeds things up so they can work through the line a little faster (which may be a good thing), but comes off as a form of rushed, anti-luxury.

These really busy, touristy spots may provide excellent food (and Okushiba is very tasty), and they will allow you to “check the box” and say you’ve been there (to that spot, where everyone else has been), but they are mostly not a comfortable experience.  The overcrowded conditions and long lines feel like flying on a discount airline.

As I waited in line, I saw the familiar “how to order” instructions, coaching newbies on the classic format for soup curry consumption.

I was not surprised to hear many of the guest speaking Chinese as I waited – Hokkaido is very popular with visitors from neighboring Asian countries.  I was surprised to see two local Japanese business men (about 55 years old) waiting in line.  They were friendly to me, offering me a cramped seat next to a cardboard box at the end of the hallway.  I declined, but smiled; we fell in together.  The presence of two locals committed enough to wait it out made me more curious about the quality of the food.

There are probably many opinions about the most classic soup curry flavor in Hokkaido, but in my opinion, the standard order would be the chicken leg soup curry.  Almost every soup curry spot has at least one “chicken leg” option, maybe two (one stewed, one fried). If you’re not sure what to order, the usual stewed chicken leg soup curry is a good option.  I assume it was on the menu at Okushiba, but on my visit I didn’t notice.

I did note that there was a Hamburger Soup Curry on the menu (2180 JPY) and (for the adventurous) a Natto Soup Curry (1580 JPY).  For the customer that really must spend as much as possible on lunch, there is the Extra Meat Curry for 4400 JPY.

4400 JPY for “soup” (and standing in line).  That strikes me as a little ridiculous, but it is a lot of protein. Think about the Instagram post: “Look! I just spent 4400 JPY on soup! LOL!”

For my part, to try something a bit local-Hokkaido, I ordered the Grilled Seafood Soup Curry.

Grill Seafood Soup Curry: Oysters, Shrimp, Scallop, Fish/Shrimp meatball (?), Eggplant, Kabocha, Wood-ear Mushroom (? Or maybe seaweed?), Carrot, Piman, Cabbage (and Broccoli as my “free” topping)

Because the staff at these tourist trap shops have to spend all day doing crowd control, telling tourists to get their luggage out of the walk way, etc., they can often be a bit cold and impersonal.  In this case, the girl that took my order was nice.  Maybe it helped that I was ready when she approached me (and that I could speak a bit of Japanese).

Grilled Seafood Soup Curry.  Check. I asked for a recommendation for the “soup” flavor, she said “shrimp,” and I concurred. Check.

Here is some more about the Okushiba shrimp broth:

Okushiba Shouten features a Ebidashi extracted from 2,000 sweet prawns daily, which has been passed down for three generations.

For spice; I was feeling reckless, so I choose “#2” (out of a 10, just barely more spicy than not spicy at all).  I ordered the “M”-sized rice.  Check. She smiled and moved on to the next person in line, across the hall, on the part of the line wrapping down the other wall of the building.

About this time – *ding* – it was 11 AM and time to open up.  Fairly quickly, all of the people in front of me were, one at a time, seated.  By the time I was inside, a few of the guests that had preordered outside the shop already had their food.

Inside, nice place.  Not at all “plastic and modern” – I appreciate that traditional feel. It’s an old shop, with real character.  I was seated at a thick wooden counter top. There is lots of wood in this shop, in fact.  It’s been here a while.  Feels pretty good inside.

And then, lunch arrived:

That is a beautiful bowl of soup curry.  No doubt.

From my first bite (of an that unidentified mushroom item), I could taste the shrimp flavor.  Then a big, chewy scallop (soaked in that shrimp-broth), delicious. And a whole shrimp, with it’s head on (not sure if I was supposed to eat it whole, or peel it; I did peel it with my fingers, wrapping the messy shell in a tissue and stashing that mess behind my bowl).

Some of the veggies – like the squash and eggplant – seemed to be cooked in oil, and were greasy.  It’s common at soup curry shops to pan-/deep fry some of the veggies, but that heavy oil brings a kind of “fast food” taste to an other wise special meal.

Here is a note I found interesting: The picture of the bowl as it first arrived at my table looks great, doesn’t it?  All the seafood and veggies nicely displayed; there is a reason for that.

There was a large portion of fresh cabbage in the broth, beneath the more featured ingredients.  That cabbage served to provide a physical base; so the rest of the toppings are above the level of the liquid; so you can see them; so they are arranged and look nice.  That set-up may not change the flavor, but it’s a good idea, and made the dish more visually beautiful.  And in contrast to the greasy eggplant, that cabbage was fresh, crunchy; the mix of the bitter cabbage flavor and the rich soup base was excellent, really enjoyable.

The food was really good.  I was having a good time.

As the pictures above show, there is a process to ordering soup curry.  And one of the typical steps is deciding how ridiculously spicy-hot you want your soup to be.  This is a necessary step, because it seems many patrons do indeed want their soup head-meltingly hot.

Check out super-sized 12-point scale on the menu that goes from “shrimpy” (1) to “devilish” (12).

I had ordered a #2 – a meager single bump above shrimp status.  For me, #2 was already hot enough that the intense spiciness was somewhat distracted from the flavor.

When I sat down at my seat at the counter, there was a guy next to me.  He had also ordered the Seafood Curry, and as he had been in front of me in line, his meal arrived about five minutes before mine.  As he started to eat, there was the characteristic *sniff sniff* as his nose began to run.  I said hello, and asked him how spicy he had ordered – he replied he had ordered a #6.

Here in Sapporo, there is a place in Tanukikougi called Delhi that makes “Indo curry.” (Service is in Japanese only, but I recommend that shop if you can read and speak a little.)  It is supposed to be “Indian food,” but from my perspective it is soup curry with an Indian theme (Picante Soup Curry also has an Indian theme, who knows why).  That shop is simple (it’s no tourist attraction), but it’s very comfortable and I eat there regularly.  They don’t have a “1 to 10” scale, but their soup curry is spicy enough, and the whole room is a chorus of *sniff sniff* as the spicy heat in the food sets off the noses of the diners.

I finished the meal by eating some of the broth with a spoon. Spicy, but sort of plain. Maybe their chicken broth is better, but compared to shops like Garaku and Suage4 soup curry, the flavor of the broth was underwhelming.

It was a very heavy meal.

I added this comment to my notes, almost an hour after I had finished eating.  Soup curry has a lot of oil.  And meals with a lot of oil will leave you feeling full and sluggish.  The heavy, filling soup curry at Okushiba is a good meal to have before you spend the afternoon on the couch watching a movie, or to set you up for an afternoon nap.

Overall, what do I think?  I like this shop, but I don’t like the tourist-trap qualities.  In addition to the lines that remind me of an amusement park, there are little guest books where you can leave notes (that is probably fun, and popular, for some customers, but has a pandering quality, clutters up the tables, and cheapens the experience).

They also push you to leave a review, using a little sign to offer you a bribe (free lassi) if you do it.  When we did our review of 2Bro’s Pizza in Kobe, we called them out of the same kind of over-marketing (they try to bribe customers for reviews with a sticker).

Putting a sign on the table to nag your customers to go to their phones, to help you market your business, is a distraction.  It is not about the customer or the food.  It is about the business aspirations of the owner.  I respect entrepreneurs.  I admire good businesses.  But this kind of QR-code staring at me while I eat, the offer of a cheap bribe to exaggerate the Google-review process, is low end.  It’s crass.  A bad idea.  It’s a distraction from the point of it all – which is presumably a memorable meal.  As it is, I remembered the QR code (which was not the best part of the meal).

There are a lot of things I like about Okushiba.  As I did my research, I can see they have several other shops, including some locations that are less central, and probably have a more “local” feel.  There is the Okushiba Shoten Parents’ Soup Curry, also in Chuo-ku.  There is a Okushiba Soup Curry shop in Miyanomori. There is another Okushiba Soup Curry in Minami-ku.  I’d like to try one of those other shops, and see if the experience is a little more natural and comfortable.

By the time I finished my lunch (at 11:40), the line was wrapped all the way around the hallway and down another hall.  I like soup curry.  I think Okushiba is an excellent example of this classic Hokkaido food.  But I would never wait an hour for this kind of food.

If you love Hokkaido, eating some soup curry may be a good part of your visit. Soup curry is simple.  It’s “home-like” food.  Standing around in a basement for an hour feels like a chore, and it’s not a good plan to relax and enjoy yourself.

If you want to try Sapporo soup curry, I would personally avoid these touristy, downtown spots.  We have a big review of the Garaku soup curry main store, and even though their food is great (it is great), that experience is pretty bad (an obnoxiously long waiting system).  However, there is a new Garaku “Sitatte Sapporo” store that is less famous, but offer that same excellent taste.  The Soup Curry Treasure store is also from the same company; the line is long, but possibly a better experience than waiting in a basement (that line is outside thou, and a little cold in the winter).  And there are much less famous shops where you can eat soup curry with wait at all (and at more friendly prices).  I recently had Espirito in Kita-ku, and it was (simple but) great.  And the Picante soup curry shop near Maruyama Koen makes great food as well.

If you’re going to come to the Ekimae Soseigi Okushiba store, get their early.  Otherwise, I’d try some place more local.

For more Sapporo Soup Curry see:

— See their other Miyanomori Okushiba-chan Soup Curry (near Hokkaido Jingu Shrine)
— Soup Curry Garaku Main Store
— Soup Curry Garaku Sitatte Sapporo
— Soup Curry Treasure
— Okushiba Soup Curry, Ekimae Soseigi shop in Chuo-ku, Sapporo
— Dehli Soup Curry (Indian flavors)
— The Suage4 Soup Curry shop in the Miredo building in Chuo-ku, Sapporo
— Picante Soup Curry Maruyama