Hokkaido famous queuing ramen restaurant “Menya Saimi” at Sapporo.

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Written by Takashi Sato

“Menya Saimi” is a popular ramen restaurant for media and TV interviews as regularly deemed the number one in Sapporo. “Menya Saimi” was the officially ranking number one of “2015 best ramen TOP 10 in Hokkaido” last year of our APP.

“Menya Saimi” is located in the quite living area at Sapporo. It takes about 5-minute walk from Exit 1 of Misono Station of Metro Toho Line.

The shop looks simple but usually has long queue before it opens. We arrived at 10:40 which is 20 minutes before it opens, but already in the 7th place of the queue。 。 。 (_)。According to other visitors' experience, you might need to wait at least 30 minutes before it opens. It located through a residential neighborhood instead of commerical business district, so it's easy to noticed that this ramen shop offers very nice ramen in order to attract a lot of customers.

There are a lot of autographs decorate on the wall by famous celebrities, and lines outside the shop are notorious.

The menu is as simple as the shop, it provides ramen, rice and few kinds of drinks only.
Personally, it might be the secret successful way to manage the shop as this is the only shop without open other branch in order to control the quality, simple and clean shop image, no other small side dishes provided, and just focus and prond of their taste of ramen for their customers.

The most famous at Saimi is miso ramen, 750yen.
Apparently the owner had worked in “Sumire (すみれ)” where is also another famous Hokkaido ramen shop. The broth made from pork bones and fish, therefore it's rich but not fatty, and also become the most popular dish at Saimi.

The ramen look is simple, apart from toppings chashu pork, spring onion and bean sprouts with grated ginger to bring the broth flavor. If you would like to have bigger size just need extra 100 yen only. The soup is absolutely delicious, and people usually order ramen with extra rice (small rice 50 yen, regular rice 100 yen, big rice 150 yen).

For customer who likes spicy, spicy miso ramen (800 yen) is recommended with extra chashu pork (200 yen). Usually good chashu pork can be definited whether it's a good ramen shop or not, Saimi's chashu pork is also popular with good reputation. Sometimes can be sold out if visit here late.

Saimi's noodle is thick and chewy, which enveloped by the rich soup give you a smooth mouth-watering sensation. This kind of noodle is easy to bring up the flavor of soup, which was became popular from Hokkaido, and there are a lot of places are using this type of noodle to make their own recipe.

Although it might takes awhile in line, but this ramen shop definitely won't let you down. Please go and try it!

【Menya Saimi】

Address:5-3-12, 10-ji Misono Toyohira-ku, Sapporo-shi, Hokkaido.
Open:11:00-15:15 / 17:00-19:30
Close:Mondays and irregular closing day (2 days)
Access:5-minute walk from Exit 1 of Misono Station of Metro Toho Line.

Takashi Sato

Author

Birth place: Hokkaido prefecture

Takashi Sato