Hokkaido Sotong Balls At Tampines Mall Atrium

Hokkaido Sotong Balls At Tampines Mall Atrium

EM bought six Hokkaido sotong balls at the Tampines Mall Singapore atrium today despite the long queues. The famous and highly popular Hokkaido Food Festival had been underway since 5 July 2008. This Japanese food festival has been a fixture at Tampines Mall for a couple of years. She tried to purchase some Japanese food on a Sunday but she couldn’t get a toehold in the maddening crowd. Only today did we get a chance to sample delicacies from Japan’s Hokkaido Prefecture.

Six huge solid-looking sotong balls stared at me during lunchtime today. A glassy piece of edible material was laid on top of the pieces with a thick Japanese mayonnaise paste. I bit a little of the this glassy stuff and it melted in my mouth without much taste.

When I chewed onto the sotong balls, the soft paste-like outer layer was mushy to touch with a mild sweetness. Under this layer, the sotong parts were apparent on my tongue, like springy chewing gum with a robust texture. The difference in contrast between the soft out shell and the firmer core made this an interesting bite-sized dish for lunch.

As I enjoyed the morsels of sotong between my teeth, I could imagine the sotongs must have undergone plenty of cardiovascular work out in the oceans off Hokkaido before they landed up in some Japanese fishing vessel to be brought to Singapore for our dining pleasure. The world is indeed getting smaller by the years.