Escalope in Nemuro: Hokkaido’s Bamboo-Shoot Butter Rice and Cutlet Plate — What It Is, Where It Came From, and the Shops, Hours and Parking You Need

Nemuro sits at the far eastern tip of Hokkaido, a long way from anywhere, and it has one dish that people drive out there to eat: escalope (エスカロップ). It is a plate of butter rice studded with chopped bamboo shoot, topped with a thin breaded cutlet and covered in brown demi-glace sauce, with shredded cabbage or salad on the side. It costs around ¥1,000, it is served in old-style coffee shops and diners rather than restaurants, and as of September 2026 the Nemuro City Tourism Association lists seven places in town that make it. This guide covers what the dish is, the short and slightly strange story of where it came from, and the practical things you need if you are arriving by car: addresses, hours, parking, which shops take cards, and the afternoon gap that catches most first-time visitors.

What escalope actually is

Start with the rice. It is fried in butter and mixed with finely chopped takenoko (bamboo shoot), which gives a light crunch you will not find in any other Japanese rice dish. On top goes a thinly sliced, breaded and fried cutlet, usually pork. Over the cutlet goes demi-glace, the brown sauce that Japanese Western-style cooking (yoshoku) borrowed from French kitchens a century ago and made its own. Cabbage or a small salad sits on the side. Everything is on one plate, and you eat it with a spoon and fork.

Two things make it worth the drive. The bamboo-shoot butter rice is unusual and genuinely good. And each of the seven shops guards its own sauce, some of them kept going for more than fifty years, so the same name gets you a noticeably different plate from one door to the next.

The origin: a coffee shop that lasted eight years

The dish was created at a coffee shop called Mont Blanc (モンブラン), which operated in Nemuro from 1957 to 1965 (Showa 32 to 40). Its third head chef, Kinya Komura, arrived in Nemuro in 1963. The shop closed two years later. So the birthplace of Nemuro's signature dish served it for only about two years under the man who invented it.

The name is the odd part. According to the tourism association's feature on the dish, it goes back to a plate called "escaloppine" (エスカロッピニー) at a Western-style restaurant in Shimbashi, Tokyo: spaghetti Napolitan with a cutlet on top and demi-glace over it. Komura later worked at an Italian restaurant in Yokohama that served an "escalope" with chicken rice in place of the spaghetti. When he recreated it in Nemuro, he swapped the chicken rice for butter rice, and that is the version that stuck. Three cities, three bases, one name. You will sometimes read that the name comes from the French word for a thin slice of meat; the tourism association's account does not say that, so we do not either.

The seasoning of the butter rice has been adjusted over the years in response to customers asking for something easier to eat, according to the same feature.

New Mont Blanc: the original recipe, still served

The reason the dish survived the closure of Mont Blanc is that the recipe moved next door in time. In 1963, Katsutoshi Umeda opened New Mont Blanc (食事と喫茶 ニューモンブラン), which took over the Mont Blanc recipe and has served it as the "original escalope" ever since. The recipe has not changed since opening day, and the sauce is simmered in a large pot for days at a time and topped up rather than replaced. More than fifty years on, this is the benchmark plate: if you only eat one escalope in Nemuro, most locals would point you here.

The seven shops, and how the sauces differ

The Nemuro City Tourism Association lists these seven places under "escalope" (as of September 2026):

• New Mont Blanc (食事と喫茶 ニューモンブラン)
• Dorian (食事と喫茶 どりあん)
• Bara (食事と喫茶 薔薇)
• Minato Shokudo (ミナト食堂)
• New Kaori (ニューかおり)
• Restaurant ATTOKO at Akesato Ito Farm (明郷 伊藤☆牧場 レストランATTOKO)
• Ankuru & Chibori (あんくる&チボリ)

The tourism association's feature describes what several of them do differently:

• Dorian — a brown sauce kept going for more than fifty years, with a sharper, more acidic edge.
• Bara — the brown sauce is cooked down with butter and flour into a richer, heavier demi-glace.
• New Mont Blanc — the unchanged original: a sauce simmered for days in a big pot and topped up.
• Restaurant ATTOKO — a farm restaurant using its own Nemuro Tankaku beef. The rice is fried in beef fat and the sauce is built from beef stew.
• Ankuru & Chibori — venison instead of pork, and the bamboo shoot is cut coarsely so it keeps its bite.

If you are staying the night, the standard local move is to eat at one shop for lunch and another for dinner. Dorian and New Mont Blanc also serve a sister dish on the same base called Oriental Rice (オリエンタルライス); if you have room, it is the other half of Nemuro's coffee-shop cooking.

Shop details for drivers: the three with full published information

The tourism association publishes complete listings (hours, parking, payment) for three of the seven. What follows is taken directly from those pages. For the other four, the association's site lists them by name only, so we have not invented details for them; ask locally or search the shop name in Japanese.

New Mont Blanc (食事と喫茶 ニューモンブラン) — the original

• Address: 1-1 Kowa-cho, Nemuro, Hokkaido 087-0027 (北海道根室市光和町1-1)
• Phone: 0153-24-3301 (Japanese)
• Hours: 10:00–15:00 (last order 14:20) and 17:00–23:00 (last order 18:40), exactly as listed on the tourism association's page. The evening last order is early relative to the closing time, so if you are coming for dinner it is worth phoning ahead.
• Closed: irregular days off (no fixed weekly closing day)
• Parking: 4 cars
• Price: escalope ¥1,000; Oriental Rice ¥1,250
• Seats: 50 (6 at the counter, 37 at tables)
• Payment: no credit cards — bring cash
• Official listing: Nemuro City Tourism Association (Japanese)

Dorian (食事と喫茶 どりあん)

• Address: 2-9 Tokiwa-cho, Nemuro, Hokkaido 087-0041 (北海道根室市常盤町2-9)
• Phone: 0153-24-3403 (Japanese)
• Hours: 10:00–20:00, open straight through (last order 19:30)
• Closed: Tuesdays (open if the Tuesday is a public holiday)
• Parking: 12 cars
• Price: escalope ¥1,180; Oriental Rice ¥1,300
• Seats: about 40 (6 at the counter, 33 at tables)
• Payment: credit cards and electronic money accepted
• Official listing: Nemuro City Tourism Association (Japanese)

Bara (食事と喫茶 薔薇)

• Address: 2-9 Yayoi-cho, Nemuro, Hokkaido 087-0049 (北海道根室市弥生町2-9)
• Phone: 0153-24-4746 (Japanese)
• Hours: 10:30–15:00 and 16:30–19:00 (last order 18:30)
• Closed: Mondays
• Parking: 12 cars
• Price: escalope ¥1,100; "special" escalope ¥1,950
• Seats: 4 at the counter, 24 at tables
• Payment: no credit cards (some other electronic payment is accepted)
• Official listing: Nemuro City Tourism Association (Japanese)

Decide your arrival time before you leave

Put the three sets of hours side by side and the trap is obvious.

• Two of the three close between lunch and dinner. Bara is shut 15:00–16:30 and New Mont Blanc 15:00–17:00. If you roll into Nemuro at 14:30 after a long drive, you have very few options. Dorian is the one that stays open through the afternoon until 20:00.
• Last orders come early. New Mont Blanc stops lunch orders at 14:20 and Bara stops dinner orders at 18:30. For an evening arrival, a quick phone call in advance (Japanese) saves a wasted trip.
• Parking is 4 to 12 spaces, not a lot. New Mont Blanc has four. If they are taken, look for a paid car park nearby rather than waiting in the street.
• Carry cash. New Mont Blanc and Bara do not take credit cards. Dorian does.

The simplest plan: aim to sit down between 10:00 and 13:00 for lunch, and if you want a second escalope for dinner, choose Dorian or phone the other two first.

Getting to Nemuro

Nemuro is remote even by Hokkaido standards. The tourism association's official access page gives public-transport times but no driving times, so we are not going to guess at one. The official figures are:

• Nakashibetsu Airport to Nemuro Station: about 95 minutes by bus
• Kushiro Station to Nemuro Station: about 150 minutes by JR train

Source: Nemuro City Tourism Association — Access (Japanese).

If you are driving from Sapporo, treat it as a two-day trip: Sapporo to Kushiro on day one, Kushiro to Nemuro on day two, rather than trying to do it in a single push. Picking up a rental car in Kushiro or at Nakashibetsu Airport and driving the last stretch is the other sensible option. If you have not driven in Japan before, read our guide to renting a car in Hokkaido first; from late autumn onward, the winter tyre guide applies to eastern Hokkaido as much as anywhere. And Nemuro is on the coast at the eastern edge of the island, so it is cooler and windier than Sapporo in every season: check what to wear in Hokkaido, month by month before you pack.

Escalope is the Nemuro entry in a wider tradition of Hokkaido city dishes with disputed or surprising origins. If you are passing through Kushiro on the way, zangi, Hokkaido's fried chicken, is that city's claim.

Frequently asked questions

Q. Is "escalope" French? Is it a French dish?

The name looks French but the dish is Japanese yoshoku. The tourism association traces the name to "escaloppine" at a Western-style restaurant in Shimbashi, Tokyo, by way of a Yokohama Italian restaurant, before it reached Nemuro in the 1960s. The rice-plus-cutlet-plus-demi-glace form has no direct French equivalent.

Q. Is the original shop still open?

No. Mont Blanc, where the dish was created, closed in 1965. New Mont Blanc, which took over the recipe in 1963 and has kept it unchanged, is still open and is the closest thing to the original you can eat today.

Q. Is escalope halal?

Assume not. The standard version is a pork cutlet, and the sauces are long-simmered meat-based demi-glace in kitchens that are not halal-certified. One shop uses venison and one uses its own beef, but the tourism association's listings say nothing about halal status and we do not verify certification ourselves. If it matters to you, ask the shop directly before ordering.

Q. Do the shops have English menus?

The tourism association listings do not say, and we have not confirmed it. These are small, long-established coffee shops and diners, so do not count on it. Ordering is easy regardless: say "escalope" (エスカロップ) and hold up the number of plates you want.

Q. When is the best time to eat it?

Lunch, soon after opening: roughly 10:00 to 13:00 at any of the three shops above. In the evening, Dorian is the safest bet because it stays open through to 20:00 with a 19:30 last order; the other two close in the afternoon and take their last dinner orders early.

Before you go: Hours, closing days, prices and parking counts above are what the Nemuro City Tourism Association's official pages showed in September 2026, and they change. Check the association's site or phone the shop before you drive out; Nemuro is not a place you want to arrive at to find the door locked.

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