Torigen Sapporo — Restaurant in Sapporo

Read the reviews and decided to try it. It’s a family run restaurant, and has an atypically small menu of just 1 type of yakitori, and other grilled items like vegetable platter, and fried items. I like the flavour of the yakitori, pleasant salt seasoning (I don’t like tare, just drowns out the taste of the food). The fried tofu with leeks was good, so crispy without being too oily. The grilled squid was tender, accompanied by mayonnaise and freshly grilled ginger. The fried fish cake comes with yama-wasabi, or mountain wasabi, peculiar to Hokkaido. I’d first tried it in Kushiro, but this one is milder and even slightly sweet.

Service wise, I was initially served by what seems to be a newbie. She seemed lost with everything I’d asked me (I’d put it down to my appalling Japanese… none of them can speak English). There’s an English menu which is what is shown in the Japanese menu, but up on the board of recommended (osusume) items, was motsu, or stewed offal, an izakaya staple. But someone who seems to be the wife of the boss quickly came over and facilitated the ordering.

Atmosphere: if you enjoy the raucous type of traditional inn atmosphere, this place is for you. The boss will be calling out everything, and it seems like they have a lot of regulars. That being said, if you’re sensitive to cigarette smoke, be prepared to get smoked. Not a vape on sight.

Location wise, it’s located off the Main Street where the other yakitori places are. It’s actually a street behind, and the closest landmark would be...

We were lucky to get the last table seats as walk-in customer on a weekday at 5.30pm! Says how popular this place is amongst the locals. Based on the amount of “alcohol saves” and filled up wall calendar, no doubt customers keep coming back to this place.

However I wouldn’t recommend this place if you (as a foreigner) are after a full-stack Yakitori place. This place doesn’t separately sell chicken parts (unlike most other Yakitori places in Japan) so you can’t just order the parts you like, or avoid the parts you don’t. I wouldn’t come to this place for food. Very simple menu with not much varieties - we came in very hungry and we ordered one round of all the dishes of interest to us, and decided to go elsewhere for a second round.

I might, however, recommend this place for a typical home izakaya experience in Japan. Good vibes. They allow smokes though, and you see ashtrays...

We like this place. Just simple and authentic, it's family run business. Nothing fancy, good enough they have English menu. We enjoyed the atmosphere with local enjoyed their evening.

Grilled eggplant was super tasty and the grilled squid was tender and sweet. Choice of drink was typical Izakaya, and the Sake was nice and easy to drink.

Many Japanese ordered the hot Sake, but I drink Cold Sake which is still nice.

The fish cake is really nice and fishy in a good way.

Service was really good. We didn't have to wait to long to make any order. By the time we leave one of then came to help us with our coat.

We really enjoyed it there and will definitely come back here when we...