Tengu Manju and Deep Fried Manju with Meat Filling Are Said to Be Specialty of Iwamizawa -Tengu Manju Honpo in Iwamizawa-

Tengu Manju Honpo (天狗まんじゅう本舗) is a long-established manju (steam bun) shop in Iwamizawa city located in the northeastern part of Sapporo city and was founded in 1951. Tengu Manju (天狗まんじゅう) is popular and is said to be local specialty sweets of Iwamizawa. They have 2 branch shop, and I visited Ekimae branch shop renewed in 2014. There is a building near Iwamizawa station. A place for custmers to enjoy foods and drinks is provided at the building, too, and free tea can be drunken.

I visited here just after opening around 09:00 on Saturday. Visitors already came to the shop one after another and bought a little less than 20 manju (steamed buns). I bought 3 kinds of Tengu Manju (天狗まんじゅう * JPY 95 per one), the most popular Manju is named from the name of the shop, and 1 Deep Fried Maju with Meat Filling (あげ肉まん * JPY 110 per one) at a cash register. The prices are JPY 395 in total. It is a very reasonable price. I carried a dish that manju was served to a table and prepared for free tea myself.

I ate the pink manju at once. The manju is the size with around 6-7 cm in diameter, strained bean paste flavored cherry blossom that used the adzuki bean produced in Tokachi came in sight when I bited it. I felt that it was very sweet. Then I ate the light brown manju. The strained bean paste tasted brown sugar flavor and was very sweet, too. Then I ate the white manju. Judging from manju's appearance, I did not know what did taste like. I felt that it was a little salty and it might be the strained bean paste tasted salt. Colors of thin wrapping of dough might be related to the flavor each. Those strained bean pastes were too sweet to me, but it might be suitable to having a sweet tooth.

Finally I ate the deep fried manju with meat filling, and it was very tasty! It was salt flavor and was just like piroshki. By the way, a soft serve ice cream seems to be popular. A child ate the soft serve ice cream on that day. Eating the soft serve ice cream is a typical Hokkaido style in a winter.