Fancy French food at Le Baerenthal in Sapporo

The smallest pizza I have ever seen, and some other very nice starters

My workload that had me working from 08:00 to 23:00 most days (including Saturdays and Sundays) for a few weeks here (no overtime pay, of course ...) has lightened and during the four day Golden Week holiday I had time to meet some friend I have not seen in moths.

One friend wanted to try a restaurant that is mentioned in the local Guide Michelin (not sure if they have a star or not) so we went there on Monday. It was a very nice place. The building was beautiful. The staff were very polite and wore tuxedos. The food was great.

I figured the place was probably quite fancy even before we got there, so I wore somewhat respectable clothes (at least for being me), including a black suit style jacket. My friend showed up in jeans and a shirt. All the other guests wore suits, evening gowns, expensive looking jewelry etc. and my friend was a bit embarrassed about being the only one so casually dressed. 

Good cheese is expensive in Japan, and this plate cost 2600 yen

This dessert contained rhubarbs, which is rare in Japan but common in Sweden 

Everyone else seemed to be celebrating something too. The couple at the table next to ours had just gotten married today, and the woman mentioned she was wearing the same clothes as when she was proposed to in New York(!) The other tables had birthday cakes or "happy wedding anniversary" cakes. One young couple suddenly had an extremely large bouquet of large and very red roses, and a small expensive looking present box, so we thought the guy was going to propose then and there. It turned out to be a necklace in the box, though, so it was probably her birthday. We seemed to be the only ones there with a "this place looks fun, let's go" attitude.

The food was nice, but a bit expensive. We ended up eating for over 20,000 yen (which is a lot with Japanese prices) without including drinks, despite there only being two of us. It was a lot of fun though. My friend for instance suggested that the expensive looking present box "probably contains a spring loaded Jack-in-the-box", which made me laugh (though it did not, of course). She also suddenly said: "Oh, I bought a bag of cookies" and reached for her bag. I tried to convince her that eating cookies you brought yourself was probably not proper in this restaurant. She had brought omiyage cookies to give to me to bring home, so she was not crazy enough to actually intend to eat them in the restaurant, but she keeps doing funny things like that. 

The menu had the date printed on it too, so I guess the print new ones every day