One of the things that I really wanted to eat in Sapporo was ‘soup curry’. I tried Samy’s Soup Curry in Downtown Gallery once and really liked it. So I was very keen to try the authentic version in Sapporo. We asked the hotel concierge for a soup curry recommendation on our first day in Sapporo and she recommended Picante Soup Curry which is located one street away from the hotel.
Picante Soup Curry is a small place, seats about 15-20 people comfortably. There is almost always a queue outside the shop especially during peak hours, so best to go ahead of the lunch and dinner hour. In our short one week stay at Sapporo, we visited Picante Soup Curry three times. The food is very good, not too heavy on the spice and goes so well with an ice-cold bottle of Sapporo beer. I am not sure how Picante compares with the other soup curry brands in Sapporo because we did not try any other place.
There are quite a lot of options at Picante in terms of soup base, ingredients, level of spiciness and amount of rice. My husband loved the deep-fried chicken drumstick soup curry with the dashi soup base, and ordered that in every visit. The fried chicken is highly recommended! I tried to be healthy and went with the shabu-shabu pork curry as well as the vegetable curry with tomato soup base.
The fluffy saffron-flavoured basmati rice goes very well with the soup curry. I had to exercise a lot of restraint not to upsize the portion of rice in my order. There are so many other options available on the menu but we ran out of time to try them all. Picante’s menu can be found here (though I am not sure if it is the most up-to-date).
Picante Soup Curry (ピカンティ)
Address: 〒001-0013 Hokkaido, Sapporo, Kita Ward, Kita 13 Jonishi, 3 Chome−2 (札幌市北区北13条西3丁目アクロビュー北大前 1F). Picante is located in the same block as the New Otani Hotel.
Tel: +81 11-737-1600
Opening hours: 11am to 11pm everyday
