SOGO Hokkaido Food Festival kicks off: Seafood bento boxes packed to the brim are super eye-catching

▲ A super generous crab stick and three-color scattered sushi bento that looks like the crab sticks might fall right off the box.

Reported and photographed by Huang Shiyuan / Taipei

The SOGO Hokkaido Food Festival has kicked off and will run from March 22 to April 5 on the 12th floor of SOGO Zhongxiao Branch. Among the over 90 vendors participating in this food festival, popular Hokkaido dessert shops such as Rokkatei, morimoto, LeTAO, KINOTOYA, Ishiya Seika, SNAFFLE'S, and HORI are all gathered together. Happo-ten is offering a limited-edition lemon flavor, available only 50 per day. Additionally, there are seafood bento boxes featuring ingredients all flown in directly from Hokkaido—though the prices aren’t cheap, the bento boxes are piled high with an abundance of seafood, making them hard to resist for seafood lovers.

 

For this event, SOGO has invited popular Hokkaido dessert shops including Rokkatei, morimoto, LeTAO, KINOTOYA, Ishiya Seika, SNAFFLE'S, and HORI. Among them, Rokkatei is featuring its famous Marusei Butter Sandwich cookies, while KINOTOYA’s signature item is its melt-in-your-mouth Sapporo School Special Milk Biscuits. As for LeTAO, besides the original and strawberry milk flavors of their double-layer cheesecake, they also offer a Uji double-layer cheesecake. SNAFFLE'S offers cheese cake sticks, as well as baked cheese and chilled cheese made from Hokkaido-produced butter cheese—double the flavor, rich yet not greasy. Meanwhile, morimoto’s Furano Snowmelt Cheesecake is a must-try famous dessert from Hokkaido’s Furano region.


▲ Crab and scallop scattered sushi bento and strait scattered sushi bento.


▲ King crab from Asahikawa’s X Oyster Bar is astonishing.

Other Hokkaido dessert shops include Hokushin, Yuki no Tsuki, Ishiya Seika, Mirei, Iwase Ranch, Shinorino, Warakudo, FarmDesigns, Grand Hotel Sapporo, Tokachi Tetteppo Workshop, Joli Créer, pancake shop Q? Shokudo, and others. Other regions of Japan also have notable participants, such as popular items like soft serve ice cream, fluffy pancakes, and custard puddings. There are also local sweets, rice crackers, and snacks, including Apple & Snack and Kosaka Senbei, as well as Ping Shan Farm, Kitami Hashika-dori, and Shizuoka Oishi Tea House.


▲ Various types of seafood nabe (hot pot).


▲ Aged curry bread.


▲ Salmon roe.

Hokkaido’s seafood is fresh and delicious. This time, two bento vendors came from Hokkaido to Taiwan: Kushiro’s Kensho-kan and Asahikawa’s Asahikawa Ritsu X. They prepared a variety of richly flavored seafood bento boxes at the venue, including those with salmon, sea urchin, scallops, crab, shrimp, cod roe, octopus, and more. Prices range from 90 to 730 New Taiwan Dollars, and there are different discounted items each day, with the lowest starting at 380 New Taiwan Dollars.


▲ Matcha full moon cream cake. (Photo provided by the vendor)