Isetan Hokkaido Fair

Isetan Hokkaido Fair
Shaw House, Isetan Supermarket Basement

This was a walk down memory lane as it's been almost 3 years since my holidays spent in Hokkaido. Food and confectionery as well as chefs and sales staff are brought into Singapore from Hokkaido for this fair that's said to be the largest out of Japan. The Yubari Soft Serve Ice Cream ($4.50) was so good! Extremely fragrant and milky, this reminded me of the time when I had a towering 7 layers of soft serve (I have the photo as proof!) in Hokkaido. Which I finished all by myself!

Besides soft serve, there's also a variety of gelato to choose from. The Sweetberry Honeysuckle ($4.50) was uncommon enough to warrant a try. The taste was interesting, not too sweet and had a slightly sour aftertaste to it. This intrigues me enough to google it and this turns out to be a plant which bears large and tart purple berries which can be eaten fresh or used in jams. Another ingenuity of the Japanese to develop it into a yummy ice cream!

The Otaru Marugoto Sweet Potato ($2.80) was wonderful. It's a baked sweet potato cake filled with melty mild custard cream. Normally, I don't like custard cream but the fragrant sweet potato more than covers its taste which was perfect for me! From my memory, Otaru is a nostalgic and romantic city with its famous canals lined with Western-style architecture on both sides. I was charmed by its beauty!

The Yomogi Mochi ($2.30) is a rice cake made from glutinous rice and mugwort. The sweet red bean paste topping contrasted nicely to the extremely soft and slightly bland mochi.

There's such a wide variety of these Japanese traditional sweets that I had to try another. The Tokachi Red Bean Rice Cake ($3.50) was very similar to the previous mentioned, except that it's a plain mochi stuffed with a generous amount of red bean paste. I'm gushing over its softness!

There were a lot of makeshift stalls selling all types of goodies from Hokkaido and I had fun reminiscing about the good old time, identifying the stuff that looks familiar (such as the corn crackers coated with chocolate!) and of course, eating those yummy treats!