If there’s one thing you can’t miss when visiting Hokkaido, it’s their seafood! The whole Hokkaido region is famous for its abundance of seafood and there’s one great place to experience that in Hakodate, the Hakodate Asaichi.

Hakodate Asaichi is the city’s famous morning seafood market with an array of delectable fresh seafood, fruits and vegetables and many other delicious things. The market opens daily from 5am (6am during winter) until noon and is conveniently located close to JR Hakodate Station. The narrow lanes, congested alleys, vast sheds and crowded stalls are bustling with activity.

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I’d recommend getting up early to enjoy the bustling morning atmosphere and try the mouth-watering kaisen don (seafood rice bowl) to start your day. Seafood rice bowl is a bowl of steaming rice topped with freshly-caught seafood.

Kikuyo Shokudo Honten（きくよ食堂)

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Kikuyo Shokudo (きくよ食堂) is a long established restaurant at Hakodate morning market. The menu offers a vast variety of different seafood combinations for kaisen don and come in two sizes, full portion or half portion. We tried the kaisen don in half portion with four types of seafood consisting of uni (sea urchin), ikura (salmon roe), crab and hotate (scallop) for 1680 yen and two types of seafood with hotate and amaebi (shrimp) for 1380 yen. The set comes with pickles and miso soup. The ingredients used for the kaisen don were fresh but the taste of the seafood was just average. The uni had a nice fragrance to it and the scallop were sweet. However, the crab meat didn’t have much taste in them.

Gano Katsu Ika Tsuribori (元祖活いか釣り堀)

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Hakodate is famous for its fresh, delicious seafood, and squid in particular, and it doesn’t get any fresher than squid you catch yourself. One of the famous activities in the market is fishing for live squid. Experience the thrill of squid fishing from the fish tank in the market and enjoy your freshly caught squid a few minutes later served as sashimi. Fresh squid sashimi is tender and has a chewy texture. The natural sweetness of the beautifully transparent flesh is a real taste sensation.

Uni Murakami

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Uni Murakami is a restaurant that specialize in uni. It is operated directly by a uni processing plant and the key selling point is their preservative free uni. This restaurant was one of the two restaurants we tried at the Hakodate morning market. We tried the small size uni bowl trio with uni, salmon and ikura for 2160 yen. The prices here is more expensive than Kikuyo Shokudo, however the seafood served is definitely of higher quality. The uni was creamy, sweet, and melt in mouth with no foul aftertaste. The fresh quality of it can be seen by its plump shape and vibrant color. Definitely the best uni we tried at the market.  

HAKODATE MORNING MARKET
Address: Japan, 〒040-0063 Hokkaido Prefecture, Hakodate, 若松町9−19
Website: www.hakodate-asaichi.com