The Universe of Discourse

Sapporo has closed

Sapporo restaurant, on West 49th Street in New York, closed yesterday. There are 24,000 restaurants in New York, and for many, many years, Sapporo was my favorite.

Sapporo was a ramen restaurant, probably the first in New York. I remember first hearing the word “ramen” in the early 1980s, when the Larmen Dosanko appeared near Lincoln Center. But Sapporo opened in 1975. I started going there around 1984. I didn't discover it on my own; I think my dad and I happened in one day when we were in the neighborhood. But it made a big impression on me, and I would regularly stop in whenever I was nearby, and sometimes I would walk downtown (about 45 minutes) just to eat there.

When I was fifteen years old, I did something fifteen-year-old boys often do: I grew six inches and added thirty pounds in one year. I ate all the time. I spent so much time eating that it wasn't enjoyable any more, and I complained that I was tired of it and didn't have enough time to do anything else. I would come home from school and eat a double-decker sandwich (sliced muenster with mayonnaise was my favorite), half a pound of feta cheese, three yogurts, and whatever leftovers I could find in the fridge, and then two hours later when my parents got home I would ask “What's for dinner? I'm starving.” I fell in love with Sapporo because it was the only restaurant where I could afford to order as much food as I could eat. I would come out of Sapporo full. Sometimes when I left Sapporo there was still some rice or noodles in my bowl, and I would stop thinking about food for an hour or two.

On the table were three intriguing bottles, one brown, one pale yellow, and one bright red. The brown one was obviously soy sauce, but what were the others? I learned that the pale yellow one was vinegar and the bright red one was hot oil and had great fun trying them out in different combinations. I had never thought of using vinegar as a condiment, and I loved it.

Sapporo was where I first had agedashi dofu, which is delectable cubes of soft tofu, dusted in flour or starch, fried brown and crisp, and served in savory broth. It is ephemeral: you have to eat it right away, before it gets cold and soggy.

My favorite dish was the pork cutlet donburi. (They didn't call it “katsudon”; I didn't learn that until later.) The cutlet was embedded, with onions, in a fried egg that covered and adhered to the top of the rice, and I can still remember how it tasted with the soy sauce and vinegar, and the texture of it. It was tricky to pick up the cutlet, with its attached fried egg, with chopsticks. I now use chopsticks as well as I use a fork, automatically and unconsciously, and I think Sapporo was probably where I learned to do it.

Because of Sapporo, I became so enamored of vinegar that I started to put it on everything. I didn't like mustard, I thought, but one day I learned that the principal ingredient in mustard, other than the mustard itself, was vinegar. This put a new light on things and I immediately decided I had better give mustard another try. I discovered that I did indeed like mustard (like vinegar, but with extra flavor!) and I have liked it ever since.

(Around the same time of my life, I was learning about beer, and I eagerly tried Sapporo beer, which they feature, hoping that it would be as wonderful as Sapporo restaurant. I was disappointed.)

I deeply regret that I missed my last chance to eat there. I was staying in Midtown with Toph last summer and suggested that we eat dinner there, but she chose to go somewhere else. It didn't occur to me that Sapporo might not always be there, or I would have insisted.

Goodbye, Sapporo. I love you and I will miss you.

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