Fall’s scarlet and gold had faded from the mountains around Sapporo when I sat with a small group around a heavy wood table with a charcoal grill in the center. We watched a chef cook channel rockfish over the coals—its flesh meltingly sweet and turning light pink from a shrimp-heavy diet. Over the long night the chef seared a nature-film’s worth of local seafood: mackerel, king crab, live abalone, and fat scallops cultivated in nearby Lake Saroma. The style, robatayaki, was forged by Hokkaido fishermen during long days at sea and prides itself on strong flavor and spectacle.
We ate inside possibly the weirdest building in Japan: Noa Hakobune, a concrete Brutalist imagining of Noah’s ark by Nigel Coates. Inside, rooms feel molded from adobe and murals tell the story of Noah, animals, and unexpected Greek myths. Noa Hakobune epitomizes dining in Sapporo, a city with a fascinating food culture and an exciting wine scene. My Tokyo friend Megumi Nakajima, who makes semiannual pilgrimages just “for the food,” advised me to “bring two stomachs.” She’s not alone: the route between Haneda and New Chitose is one of the busiest in the world.
Much of Sapporo’s character comes from Hokkaido itself. The northernmost main island contains about a quarter of Japan’s landmass but just 4 percent of its population. Cold waters produce prized sea urchin and crab and supply fish to top sushi chefs. Fed by mountain springs, valleys yield exceptionally flavorful produce. With ample grazing land, Hokkaido leads Japan in beef, lamb, and dairy—ingredients rarely used elsewhere in Japan and part of what makes Sapporo’s food eclectic. The city is known for hearty, comforting dishes—miso ramen, barbecue, and spicy soup curry—but increasingly for ambitious restaurants.
Sapporo feels newer than much of Japan. Its center grew during the building boom after the 1972 Winter Olympics, and the rigid social order visible elsewhere in Japan feels remote here. Locals are more likely to wear shorts in cold weather or strike up conversations with visitors. It has a freewheeling, frontier energy where newcomers can reinvent themselves.
One indispensable fine-dining experience is Cucina Italiana Magari. Seated at a small counter amid hacienda decor, my partner and I watched chef Teruki Miyashita and two assistants prepare a dinner that blended Italian technique with Hokkaido produce. A plate of local figs and prosciutto nodded to Italy, but other courses were unmistakably Hokkaido: grilled seafood with the texture of oysters that turned out to be cod milt (the sperm sac), a mackerel pâté, and a cream soup evoking New England chowder made with mantis shrimp, milt, and fugu under Parmigiano-Reggiano. We drank cold white Burgundy from a mostly French wine list. Magari feels like a restaurant that could exist only in Sapporo.
Sapporo’s best-known dish is likely miso ramen, said to have originated after World War II in Nijo Market. While Ramen Alley in Susukino is famous, my guide Alex Kotchev, a longtime Sapporo resident, steered me to Menya Saimi, a sleepy suburban shop. We waited 45 minutes in pelting rain before being sat at a cafeteria-like table beneath fluorescent lights. Nothing in the decor promised magic—but the bowl delivered. Soft yellow noodles, buttery roasted pork shoulder, bean sprouts, scallions, grated ginger, and a miso broth simmered from pork bones, vegetables, mushrooms, and kelp beginning at 5 a.m. produced a deep, complex, moving soup.
After ramen I returned to JR Tower Hotel Nikko Sapporo, which occupies Hokkaido’s second-tallest building and features an onsen on the 22nd floor. I spent afternoons soaking in 108-degree water pumped from 3,300 feet below ground while watching mountain peaks turn lavender in the setting sun.
On a short overnight to Jozankei, near Shikotsu-Tōya National Park, Elijah and I stayed at Kasho Gyoen, a secluded ryokan with in-room onsens. We soaked in a stone tub overlooking old-growth forest and dined in kimono by a pond: crab from Nemuro, a roasted Tokachi beef fillet, and then a garden walk interrupted by the season’s first snowfall. Guests poured outside to watch large wet flakes float down; someone shaped a handful of snow into a duck and handed it to me.
Ice cream is its own obsession in Sapporo. Soft serve appears on nearly every corner, but the unflavored sweet cream is revered above the rest. Hokkaido milk, prized for deep flavor, results from ideal climate, good animal care, gentle pasteurization, and high fat content. After a week of indulgence, we visited Gyokusuien, a tiny tea shop near the Ōdōri Bus Terminal run by the Tamaki family since 1933. Brothers Yasuo and Sachio welcomed us. Their shop sells tea, ice cream, and venison served over rice with green tea poured on top; the venison connection? “Hunter,” Sachio whispered, nodding to his brother. We sampled sencha and gyokuro and a milk-rich ice cream Yasuo cooks from dawn, reducing milk to concentrate flavor. It tasted like great French butter with a touch of sweetness.
Even more exuberant is shime parfait, a sculptural dessert eaten after a night of drinking. Nanakamadou in Susukino may offer the most elaborate: a foot-and-a-half-tall parfait topped with a six-inch burnt-sugar spire, nearly 20 components—rhubarb sorbet, purple sweet potato cream, pear compote with anise and red wine, bamboo-charcoal mascarpone, pistachio pudding, and a bluish agar jelly populated by tiny agar “herrings.” It’s a confection to study before eating.
We moved from JR Tower Nikko to Royal Park Canvas Sapporo Odori Park, a minimalist “party hotel” where each room has a turntable and hi-fi and the rooftop hosts a bar, firepits, tents, and views of Sapporo TV Tower. The hotel’s restaurant, Hokkaido Cuisine Kamuy, serves simply prepared local small plates and one of the city’s most complete local-wine selections. Hokkaido’s climate and terrain make it arguably Japan’s top wine region, and I tasted experimental local bottles with 30-year-old Toru Takamatsu, the world’s youngest master sommelier and a proponent of Hokkaido wines. The island also boasts Takahiko Soga, whose small-production Pinot Noirs sell by lottery and are sought after by top restaurants abroad.
We caught a train to Yoichi to meet Takahiko Soga. In a modest warehouse at the vineyard’s base, he and apprentices scrubbed French barrels. Dressed in an indigo headband and rubber boots, Soga sprinted up a hill to show us Nana-Tsu-Mori (“Seven Forests”), where vines planted in 2010 are now producing notable fruit. He explained how Hokkaido’s silky, powdery snow insulates vines during brutal winters. Tasting his Nana-Tsu-Mori Pinot Noir, I found cedar, mushrooms, black earth, and sea—an umami quality he attributed to “local culture.”
Near the end of my stay I sampled a variety of regional specialties: soup curry; gamy lamb grilled on dome-shaped Jingisukan grills; a long lunch at Suginome, one of Sapporo’s oldest ryōtei, where private rooms once hosted geisha and business deals and where food is served on wood dishes made by Ainu craftsmen. The showstopper there was a two-and-a-half-pound horsehair crab steamed and shelled table-side.
Our last and favorite meal was at Tempura Masa, a tucked-away tempura counter. High-end tempura—flash-fried in sesame oil to yield the lightest possible batter and presented as the centerpiece of a long coursed meal—is little known outside Japan. Chef Masayuki Murai, who abandoned a baseball career for the kitchen, crafted a meal that captured Sapporo’s virtues. A whole shishamo, encased in batter as delicate as frost, still haunts me. After a fragrant shiitake tempura, Murai apologetically produced a bottle of Domaine Takahiko Pinot Noir, allowed only with the umami-rich mushroom course. The meal ended with plain ice cream—grainless, like ripe mango—made after 14 hours of simmering. Murai stood over us like a tired, victorious matador, amused by the time invested in something so simple but satisfied by the memory it created.
Stay
– JR Tower Hotel Nikko Sapporo — onsen and skyline views.
– Royal Park Canvas Sapporo Odori Park — turntable-equipped rooms, lively rooftop.
– Kasho Gyoen (near Shikotsu-Tōya National Park) — simple ryokan with in-room onsens. (Trunk brand to open a Sapporo property in 2027.)
Eat
– Noa Hakobune — local grilled seafood in a Brutalist “Noah’s ark.”
– Cucina Italiana Magari — Italian technique with Hokkaido ingredients.
– Menya Saimi — suburban miso ramen worth the wait.
– Tempura Masa — high-end tempura with an impressive wine list.
– Kamuy (Royal Park Canvas) — local small plates and an excellent local-wine selection.
– Suginome — long lunch at one of the city’s oldest ryōtei.
– Nanakamadou — extravagant shime parfaits.
This article appeared in the March 2026 issue of Condé Nast Traveler.
