Izakaya Chiba, Sapporo: 55 regional sake in two hours for ¥2,500 — and the 90-minute catch
A laminated card on the table at Izakaya Chiba, in the Tanukikoji arcade area of central Sapporo, offers 120 minutes of all-you-can-drink for ¥2,500 — about $17 at ¥150 to the dollar, the rate we use here — with 55 regional sake on the list. Beer too.
We went on Thursday 18 June 2026, drank ten different sake, and came away with one real complaint.
Three tries to get in
We had been trying since April, when we walked over and found it full. In June we tried again and hit the regular Monday closing. Third attempt, and we were in.
The crowding has a simple explanation: the place opened in November 2025. It calls itself a taishu-sakaba — a plain, everyday drinking house with Showa-era energy and modern taste — and the landmark from the arcade is an orange noren.
We arrived around 17:30, shortly after opening, with our choice of seats. By 18:30 the room was full.
The plan: ¥2,500 for 120 minutes, 55 sake
Two all-you-can-drink plans, both running 120 minutes: standard ¥2,500, Premium Special ¥3,330 (about $22).
We were stuck between them until a staff member explained, without being asked, that the 55 sake are the same on both plans and the premium only opens up the shochu and the better bottles. We do not drink much shochu. That settled it, and we are still slightly impressed at being talked out of the pricier plan.
The arithmetic is not subtle: a single 100cc glass off the regular menu is ¥590 (about $4), so five glasses covers the plan.
What we ate, and the warning that came with it
We opened with a Sapporo Classic draft, which the plan covers, and worked through the food. The robatayaki list — things grilled over charcoal — hangs on the wall on wooden tags: 26 items from ¥480.
Then came the second piece of staff advice, and it is the most useful thing to know here. We get busy, they said, so order everything at the start or later orders take a while.
Good advice, and almost impossible to act on: we had never eaten here and could not guess what two people would want across two hours. We ordered what we could commit to — naga-imo, mountain yam, from the robata (¥480), grilled dried squid (¥780), and two of the three signature dishes, hon-maguro torotaku (¥990) and the nama aji fry with shibazuke tartar (¥880).
While the room was still quiet, plates came out one after another. The naga-imo, grilled and eaten with wasabi, stayed crisp. The squid, with ginger soy, could have taken longer over the coals, but grilled squid is grilled squid.
The torotaku arrived as a fist-sized mound of chopped fatty tuna and pickled daikon, with rice and a boxed set of nori. A flame under the box toasts the sheets while you build hand-rolls with a dab of soy. Fussy in a way we liked, and the tuna was fresh and fatty.
The nama aji fry is the one worth describing: horse mackerel, breaded and fried, raw in the middle. We had seen the style on television once, put somewhere around Hakone or Odawara and sold on texture. The tartar is flecked purple with shibazuke. The fish was fresh, the sauce well made, the texture genuinely new.
We both prefer our fish cooked through, though. My wife said it plainly: it is good, but she would rather have an ordinary aji fry with sauce poured over it. Not a mark against the kitchen, just two people finding out what they like.
Ten sake, and two head-to-heads
Once the beer was gone we did what a list of 55 invites: a different one every round, one glass each, compared across the table. Ten in all, in this order. (Junmai: rice alone, no added alcohol. Ginjo and daiginjo: milled further back, daiginjo furthest.)
- Joukigen (Yamagata), junmai ginjo
- Nifudazake (Niigata), junmai daiginjo
- Chikusen (Hyogo), junmai, aged ten years
- Chiyomusubi (Tottori), junmai ginjo
- Tatenokawa (Yamagata), junmai daiginjo
- Koikawa (Yamagata), junmai ginjo, usunigori (lightly cloudy)
- Izumo Fuji (Shimane), junmai ginjo, extra dry
- Daishinshu (Nagano), junmai ginjo, extra dry
- Yuki no Bosha (Akita), junmai ginjo
- Ibuki (Fukushima), junmai genshu (undiluted), pasteurised
Glasses are 100cc, which goes faster than you plan for.
Two rounds were deliberate pairings. The extra-dry match, Izumo Fuji against Daishinshu, went to Daishinshu: both were dry with the sweetness pulled back, and we agreed the Daishinshu simply tasted better. To me the Izumo Fuji read as more acidic. The other was a pasteurisation match, Yuki no Bosha against Ibuki. My wife gave it to the Ibuki; I could not separate them, or say whether I was tasting the pasteurisation or the junmai, so her vote decided it.
Last order is at 90 minutes
Partway through it was obvious the food would run out before the drinking did. We ordered again — avocado nukazuke, pickled in rice bran (¥480), salmon under grated yama-wasabi, a hot horseradish (¥730), and the third signature dish, Shiretoko jidori negima karaage, chicken and leek fried (¥880) — and were told it might take about an hour.
The room was full by then. The avocado, served whole and as it is, is exactly the kind of thing to pick at between glasses, and it came late. The salmon, raw under a heap of yama-wasabi, came later still. The karaage never arrived; as our two hours ran out we asked, learned it had not been started, and cancelled it.
And the plan’s last order landed at 90 minutes, not 120. That leaves a half-hour where you finish what is in front of you and cannot order anything else on the plan. Either of us can manage another glass in 30 minutes, and we were ready to pay for one outside the plan if it came to that. Two hours of all-you-can-drink should be two hours. That is the whole complaint, and we were a little drunk when we made it.
What it cost, and where we went next
The bill at Izakaya Chiba was ¥9,770 (about $65) for the two of us, paid by card: two ¥2,500 plans and six dishes. Food prices on the menu are before tax — ¥5,000 of plans, ¥4,340 of food, ¥434 tax, less ¥4 rounded off.
It was still early by our standards, so we went on to Mugishu Club PALS, a craft beer bar on the third floor of a nearby building — our second visit this trip. PALS keeps no permanent lineup: six taps, a different brewery whenever a keg blows, so the IPA list had already changed since we were in days earlier. We took the two IPAs listed as one and four, ¥1,650 each for a large glass, plus an otoshi — the small dish you did not order and pay for anyway — of smoked chicken gizzard, ¥330 a head.
Then the two things we come for: egg fried rice (¥850) and four oversized gyoza (¥750). The fried rice is plain and completely right. The gyoza are seasoned enough that soy sauce is beside the point. That round came to ¥5,560, putting the night across both places at ¥15,330 (about $102).
Would we go back
Yes, and getting there involved the two of us disagreeing usefully.
My read, watching the kitchen fall behind, was that the plan fights itself: come early, order everything at once and drink briskly, or skip the plan entirely — sake is ¥590 a glass — order what you want, eat properly, and move on.
My wife’s read, delivered while I was working through that out loud, was that the list is the point: 55 regional sake, all on the plan, is a setup she has never seen anywhere else, and ¥2,500 for two hours of it is not a thing you find.
She is right, and it turns the evening the other way round. You are not buying dinner with drinks attached; you are buying two hours of sake and deciding which snacks to hang on it. Order everything at the start, treat anything later as a bonus, and know the last order comes at 90 minutes. Under those rules we would go again without thinking — and the negima karaage is still owed to us.
The rest of that day was one walk: the Hokkaido University Botanic Garden, ¥420 for an adult, mostly hoping for lilacs. The avenue was green and finished for the season, though one tree still carried a few white flowers, and they smelled good.
Practical bits
- Where: Minami 2 Nishi 6-3-2, Okada Building, Chuo-ku, Sapporo — Tanukikoji arcade, orange noren out front. The Sapporo Prince Hotel, where we stay, is a short walk; we never timed it.
- Hours: 17:00 to 24:00, last order 23:30, closed Mondays, plus one irregular closing a month — per the official site, checked 18 August 2026.
- The drink plans: ¥2,500 standard and ¥3,330 premium, both 120 minutes, both covering the same 55 sake; the premium adds shochu and better bottles. Last order at 90 minutes. Hot Pepper lists the ¥2,500 plan as Sunday to Thursday only, with an early-bird ¥2,000 (checked July 2026); we only saw it on a Thursday, in June 2026.
- Sake by the glass: ¥590 for 100cc, June 2026. Five glasses covers the standard plan.
- Food: robatayaki from ¥480 across 26 items. Our six dishes ran ¥480 to ¥990 each, before tax.
- Cards: Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Diners and JCB, per the official site, checked 18 August 2026. We paid by card.
- Reservations: the official site says online booking is available, checked 18 August 2026. We walked in.
- English: we did not check whether an English menu exists. The menus and wooden tags were in Japanese, and so was the service.
- Smoking: we did not check.
- How busy, and when to order: seats free at 17:30, full by 18:30 on a Thursday in June. Once it fills, expect a wait — we were told an hour for a late order, and one dish never came. We did not note how many other customers were from abroad.
- The second stop: Mugishu Club PALS, Minami 3 Nishi 7, M’s Building 3F. Six rotating taps, no fixed lineup. Large craft beer ¥1,650, otoshi ¥330 per person, June 2026.
Facts checked 2026-08-18. Prices, hours and menus are what we saw on our visit; they change. Nothing here was sponsored or comped.