Restaurant #12: Hathi, Sapporo

Hathi is an Asian food restaurant at Daimaru department store. Yes, again at Daimaru. You know the reason why I often go to Daimaru department store is because their restaurants are all non-smoking. Believe or not, a developed country, Japan, still allow people to smoke at public restaurants. Come on! Now they have been trying to make more non-smoking areas, but still not enough. Izakaya or small restaurants cannot be banned smoking yet. I believe the right for smokers, yet please, public restaurants should be non-smoking…

Hathi has Vietnamese food as well as Thai food. I barely eat Vietnamese food since I saw how much MSG they had used, but I was attracted by their lunch menu. Therefore, I decided to try out. I ordered Grilled Chicken Lunch Plate (1380 yen).

I liked their menu. The price is affordable, and they have variety of small dishes and set menus. The décor, however, is old-fashioned. The space was large enough and possible to decorate much better. Yet, they used terrible table cross and chair. The food price is not cheap, but the restaurant looks like it. I liked, though, the opened kitchen.

Grilled Chicken Lunch Plate

This lunch plate made me full easily; pork ciao mein, curry with rice, rosemary grilled chicken drumsticks and green salad, came with a cup of soup and a hot tea. You can choose drinks. In general, their taste was pretty strong to me, and I tasted MSG from their soup. The ciao mein was good, no MSG. They cooked with a slice of lemon—very tasty! Curry was sweet yet spicy—interesting taste. Does Vietnamese eat curry? It was like a keema curry… Rosemary chicken was a big hit! Juicy and crispy with fresh ground pepper. I really loved it!

If you like Vietnamese or Thai food, you perhaps enjoy this restaurant. I might go back there for lunch when I want to eat a lot.

Total: 1380 yen

Hathi, Asian Restaurant
8F, Daimaru department store
Kita 5-jo Nishi 4-chome, Chuou-ku
Sapporo
011-828-1259
http://www.daimaru.co.jp/sapporo/restaurant/index.html