Hokuo [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Hokuo 
Address: 4 Chome Kita 5 Jonishi, Chuo Ward, Sapporo, Hokkaido
Website: n/a 
Style: Japanese
Price: $$

Judging from its cluttered underground space, random poster placement and no-frills Danish flag logo, Hokuo looks like an independent bakery. And yet when doing an address search for this review I encountered Hokuo bakery locations in Tokyo. Is it the same thing? Waah, but I hate it when the bakery I review is some sort of nation-wide mega chain! Maybe it's not...

Nevertheless, Hokuo's slogan is "Essence of Scandinavia", but besides the little flags of all the Scandinavian countries running along the walls, I had a very hard time discerning anything that looked remotely Scandinavian. Not that I was expecting it.... Instead there was the typical Japanese bakery fare: lots of savoury buns along with red bean, chocolate or melon buns. There was some sort of apple bun that had a flag next to it, but I'm not sure what it was trying to be. Actually, the selection looks way more impressive from afar, since once you enter the bakery, you realize that the same item is found in three, sometimes even four different spots; in search of that one Scandinavian baked good, I was disappointed at seeing the same chocolate chip and omelet buns over and over again....

So yeah, it was a fuwa fuwa bun (163 yen) for me, mainly because I hadn't had one yet. So did the bun live up to its "fluffy" name? Actually it did. It was essentially nothing special, just a big ball of slightly sweet dough, but the texture was nice and soft, spongy even. I liked the top with a simple dusting of powdered sugar, though I personally thought that the tiny dab of custard right in the middle was unnecessary, as there wasn't enough of it for it count as a filling and on its own it was a little weird. Definitely not Scandinavian, but not bad either. :P

Rating: ***