Ah Mah Traditional Homemade Egg Sponge Cake 阿嬷老字號 @ VivoCity – 17 October 2017

Ah Mah Traditional Homemade Egg Sponge Cake 阿嬷老字號 @ VivoCity – 17 October 2017

I was pique by curiosity whenever I see the long queue as I pass by the food basement of Vivocity. Later I learnt that the supposedly famous Ah Mah Sponge Cake had opened a branch here.

I had an impulse to join the queue at times just to taste this fantastic cake that's so much raved by almost ALL bloggers (then I realised they were mostly invited for the media tasting, and hence wrote good reviews).

But the long waiting times always discouraged me – you had to wait up to 40 minutes if you just joined the queue – and it could be up to hours just standing there to wait.

Just happened that when I visited on a Tuesday evening around 7 pm, the queue seemed relatively short (meaning 40 minutes). Since my friend had not turned up yet and I was very curious about the cake, I decided to go for the queue.

Hello Hokkaido! Osyokujidokoro Misaki お食事処 みさき @ Shakotan Peninsula (West of Otaru) June 2016 - Uni don

Hello Hokkaido! Osyokujidokoro Misaki  お食事処 みさき @ Shakotan Peninsula (West of Otaru) June 2016 - Uni don

As I reviewed the blog after a hiatus of a year, I realised that I mentioned Shakotan Peninsula under the Uni Murakami entry (http://garysyayornay.blogspot.sg/2016/06/uni-murakami-hakodate-honten-6-june-2016.html). However, I have never actually blogged about Shakotan, so I felt it was a little unfair for my readers. Hence, I decided to make up for it by digging through my old photos and introducing the Shakotan Peninsula Uni restaurant.

To be honest, Shakotan Peninsula is a beautiful coast west of Otaru, however, people don't go all the way there for the view. It is famous for uni - especially freshly caught uni from the coast. You need to take note which season you go though, there are times when the uni harvest has ended and they have nothing to serve you.

Use this website (and google translate) to get the latest news on the stock of uni:

http://osyokujidokoromisaki.com/

No use travelling all the way there and out of stock!

We drove all the way to the end of the coast in search of the restaurant.

Voila! This is the facade of the restaurant. It says in hiragana - Misaki (みさき). We chose the wrong day to come - it was a Sunday and there was a big crowd. The Japanese knew where to go for good food too.

As there was a crowd in front, the servers were busy and we did not know what to do. Shall we include our names in a book or what? It was a little scary as we did not feel welcome - everyone was hungry!

We saw many newly arrived guests peering into a book and writing into it....

I looked at the book... it must be a reservation book. Apparently we should write into it, I assume?
However, it's all in Japanese! Luckily, a lady who wrote in the book helped us. She asked for our names and helped us write in katakana. She then told us she will inform us when she gets a table - meaning it would be our turn soon! Japanese are really kind!