so when you go to Hokkaido, there’ll be a few things that the locals will tell you to eat. there’s of course the fresh and cheap(er) seafood, soup curry and…

Genghis Khan.

I kid you not. there’s this dish in Hokkaido literally called Genghis Khan. and it’s basically Lamb BBQ.

wait what? isn’t he that historic guy from Mongolia? that guy who’s the direct ancestor for 0.5% of males in the world? (apparently he had many wives and raped many too. and had thousands of kids) what’s that got to do with Hokkaido?

I asked people from Hokkaido but they don’t seem to know how the name came about so… I wikipedia-ed it:

“The dish is rumored to be so named because in prewar Japan, lamb was widely thought to be the meat of choice among Mongolian soldiers, and the dome-shaped skillet is meant to represent the soldiers’ helmets that they purportedly used to cook their food.” — from Wikipedia

ooooooooohhhhhhh.

anyways, there are plenty of Gengkhis Khan shops in Susukino.

and I think I was lucky to stumble across this reasonably priced yet popular shop called Ajinohitsujigaoka (味の羊ヶ丘). there was a line, so it must be good! I was at the redlight district of Susukino and… well.. I found this.

the prices of 1 portion of meat is around 500-930yen. pretty reasonably priced no? hey it’s lamb meat! I think there were cheaper stuff but the cheapest one I ordered was the 500yen ones. they also have internal organs and all but I opted for all meat.

what’s better than to have a chilled mug of Sapporo beer in Sapporo with Gengkhis Khan? my meal couldn’t have gotten any better to be honest. it was my most enjoyable meal throughout my whole trip in Hokkaido.

oh and that sauce is just amazing. it is a little salty but it goes with the meat so well I just had to dip a lot of it. the sauce tastes like the usual yakiniku sauce except that it had a hint of garlic and chilli flavour to it.

because I am a huge fan of lamb meat (Korea’s lamb meat costs a bomb and they only have them on skewers), we ordered 4 portions for the 2 of us. where in the end I added 1 more portion just for myself to devour. yeap. I may not look like I can eat a lot but I had 3 portions of Genghis Khan. hahaha now that sounds wrong.

the small restaurant I went to had 2 floors and they only had such limited space but yet their service was so good. they asked if we needed more vegetables and served us with patience despite the long queue of people waiting outside. I was lucky that I only waited for 15minutes since they had 2 spots and people in front of us were all groups of 3-4 people hahaha.

waiting impatiently with a happy face for my meat to be cooked!

TADA! LOOK AT THAT FRESH MEAT. have you ever ate mutton that MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH? it’s like the Kobe Beef for lamb meat. except this is much more affordable compared to Kobe Beef. I’ve never had lamb meat like this. this was one of the reasons why I want to return to Hokkaido so bad U_U. also, even if you come alone, there is a BBQ plate for every seat so no worries!

satisfied customer. I mean, super duper uber ultra satisfied customer.

so I dip it with that much of sauce and let it sit on my rice for a bit so the sauce will get to my rice and ohhhhhhh it’s serious yummy stuff. and Japanese rice’s so delicious. do you know that Japanese rice are so delicious they taste good by itself?

if you need extra garlic or chilli flakes for your sauce, you can just ask for more! I added a lot of chilli flakes for mine =D.

if you love meat, you’ll have to go to Hokkaido because this will blow your mind away!