壽山 — Restaurant in Sapporo

We had a great dining experience at Suyama! The seafood served were all extremely fresh, I personally loved how Chef prepared the kinki fish. He is a master of the charcoal grill, everything was grilled to perfection. We also loved the yam, it was cooked so well we wanted seconds (it smelled so good that I forgot to snap a photo of it before I started eating).

Chef is also extremely friendly, trying to strike a conversation with every patron there, even though there were a few foreigners present. The lady boss was really sweet too, she made an effort to google translate every ingredient to let us know what we were eating. Before leaving, I asked if I could bring home the momiji leaf on my fruits platter for memento, she said of course and even went to find a plastic bag for me to keep the leaf. Very 親切!

Will definitely visit them again when I’m back in Sapporo...

We saw a review saying they don’t treat foreigners well but we felt the opposite. It’s true they don’t speak English — but I think their hospitality was quite adequate and they actively tried to communicate via google translate. The chef was also very nice in giving us extra food when we asked for more rice.

The dishes were superb in flavor — which was amazing because the cooking technique and ingredients were all so simple — grill, steam, fried, and every dish only a handful of ingredients. Only a single chef worked all the dishes in front of us one by one and I felt the entire dinner was a quiet but kindred dedication to cooking.

Our menu was also heavily fish focused and...

If you are not conversational in Japanese, I suggest not going here.

This is by far the worst foreigner friendly restaurant I have experienced in my 5+ trips to Japan.

In other occasions, even if I do not understand Japanese that well, chef will try to chat with me on best effort basis reciprocally. Here, nothing. They only talk to Japanese in Japanese.

Food is good but not with a class. A famous ramen or soup curry restaurant would probably serve more tasty food with better service.

Fun to watch the chef cook, but it takes too long. Not sure if it was...