Midtown Lunch

Sapporo on 49th btw 6+7th holds a soft spot for me. This was THE very first place I had a good meal at when I first moved to the city (from Los Angeles.) I even remember walking down to Times Square to see Terminator 3 (I know I know after my meal there, and I’ve eaten there a few more times since then.  But every time I would get the ramen.  So when Chef Bill Telepan said he liked the cha-han last week and I saw that Amy preferred the tonkatsu curry rice dish over the ramen I realized I had never tried any of their rice dishes before.  Clearly I needed to change that.

I went around 2pm and the place was packed. Though the plus side of eating alone is that there will always be one seat left at the counter. I took the seat at the counter and ordered the oyakodon.

If you don’t know what oyakodon is, it is basically chicken cooked with onions and dashi. Then scrambled egg is added to the chicken and you serve it over rice. Don in Japanese is rice and oyako means parent and child or in this case chicken and egg. Sounds kind of wrong but taste oh so good and comforting. Add a dash of chili flakes and you’re good to go.

For $8.75 my bowl of oyakodon came piping hot and looked fantastic. The chicken, onion and egg mixture was cooked and flavored perfectly. The scrambled eggs were still a little bit runny (dried up scrambled eggs are just horrible) and the pieces of chicken were white meat and still juicy. Oyakodon is probably one of my favorite things to eat because it’s so simple and has most of my favorite ingredients in one bowl.

When I was going through the menu, I noticed a couple interesting rice dishes served in bowls of soup and were topped with meat. I might just have to make couple more trips to Sapporo to check them out.

Sapporo, 152 W. 49th St., btw. 6th & 7th 212-869-8972