Hokkaido — Restaurant in Sanford

A friend and I went in for lunch to catch up while I was back in Sanford on a Friday. Around 7pm the restaurant had decent crowd.

The atmosphere of the place left a lot to be desired. It could use more decoration and something to block what seems to be a servers station completely visible to any guest dining in the back right of the restaurant.

Our server (Melissa?) was incredibly nice but I felt as if she could’ve checked in with us a couple of times other than dropping off our food and check.

We ordered two appetizers, the Chashu steamed bun and crispy chicken. I have never seen a sadder bun in my life. The bun itself was a pre manufactured one, and the filling was a piece of pork not even half an inch wide along with two pieces of cucumber. The crispy chicken was tasty but it wasn’t crispy.

For entrees we ordered the shrimp pho and crispy chicken rice. The crispy chicken rice came with a mountain of rice with seasoning on top that tasted of furikake but I couldn’t make it out. It didn’t add much and the rice was slightly dry. The plate came with 2-3 pieces of Daikon, cucumber julienned and two (shoyu?) eggs. I would’ve loved to see the cucumber pickled to add an extra layer of flavor. The chicken was once again not crispy. My friend has the pho. It was okay, the broth itself left a lot to be desired in my opinion but pho varies too often depending on which part of Vietnam it comes from.

Overall, with how small the menu is, I was expecting this new addition to Sanford’s Asian cuisine would nail all of its dishes but instead it left me...

This place is certainly welcoming and has a very nice atmosphere. The restaurant even has a traditional Japanese seating area. It's a bit barren on decorations now but I'm sure that will change in a few weeks.

Now I'm pescatarian and my friend is vegetarian. While my friend just wanted a house salad, I wanted ramen. Unfortunately the only options I had was either the seafood ramen or the tomato ramen. I tried the tomato ramen was too watery in the broth and the flavor was too bland. The noodles were cooked perfectly which was a shame. However it did taste pretty fresh.

If you're a vegetarian I think sticking to the appetizers are the best thing. I think if this place wants to appeal to the vegans and vegetarians of Sanford or just to people who don't want meat in their ramen, try using miso for your ramen! Also more tofu dishes will really help.

Again this place is up and coming so I'll change my review if anything changes but I would still recommend this place. It is certainly an...

This place is not typically the kind of place that I would eat. However, it was my son's birthday and he got to choose wherever he wanted and this is what he chose. We were all very pleasantly surprised, except for him because he already knew, how good the food was. One of the people with us ordered crab rangoon and they said it was one of the best they've had. The place was not busy at all, which had us a little concerned, but I feel like maybe the word of how good it is just isn't out yet. Also, the location is kind of an oddball place and doesn't get as much traffic I feel. The outside sign by the street is not lit up very well so it was kind of hard to see. If I had not Google mapped it first, I would have driven right past it. My picky younger teen wasn't a huge fan of the food, so if you have a picky eater it definitely would not be the place. We will still definitely be going back. We've already made plans to go back on a Friday night with different...