Lungo Carnival honten, Sapporo: fish grilled beside the coals, a kilo of oysters, ¥7,865 for two
Lungo Carnival honten — honten meaning the main branch — is on Minami 1 Nishi 7 in central Sapporo, behind a red brick front hung with paper lanterns that read “oyster” and “genshiyaki”. We ate there on Monday 15 June 2026: a kilo of steamed oysters, two grilled fish, beer, sake and shochu, ¥7,865 for the two of us, about $52 at ¥150 to the dollar, the rate we use here. Paid by card.
Genshiyaki is the reason to come, and it is not what we expected: the fish does not lie over the coals at all.
Why the main branch and not the oyster shack
The evening was supposed to be Izakaya Chiba, shut for its regular day off. We got in there eventually, and that turned into its own article.
The other candidate was Kakigoya Lungo Carnival, the oyster shack in the Tanukikoji arcade. We had eaten a kilo of steamed oysters there in April and wanted to do it again. But the Hokkaido Jingu festival was on — we had spent the afternoon at the shrine, two stops on the train, watching karate demonstrations with tile-breaking and sword drawing in them, and walking rows of food stalls without buying anything, because breakfast at the hotel had been long and the drinking was the point of the day. The shack serves straight through and looked likely to have a queue on a festival night.
So: the same name, a different shop, a short walk. Our understanding was that gangan-mushi — oysters steamed in a covered pot — was a shack-only thing, and that the main branch did grilled fish instead. We went in planning to eat fish.
Gangan-mushi was on the menu after all.
The oysters, and the Tabasco warning
A kilo, ¥1,210 (about $8) including tax. The same sight as at the shack: large oysters packed into a cast-iron pot, and the look of it does most of the work before you eat anything.
At the shack the table had ponzu and two Lemoscos, one mild and one hot. Here the two bottles were Lemosco and Tabasco. We ate them with ponzu and Tabasco, tried the Lemosco as well, and both came down on the Tabasco side. Oysters, ponzu and Tabasco go together extremely well.
There is a hazard, though. Tilt a shell wrong and you take in oyster liquor and Tabasco together, straight to the back of the throat. One of us managed that first and got a “what are you doing” for it. The other managed it later. We finished the pot without talking.
What genshiyaki actually looks like
We spotted a mackerel going on and asked whether we could photograph it. A whole fish, skewered head-down, standing upright in the sand next to the basket of coals rather than above it, with sprigs of herb already pushed into the cuts along its side.
One account of the method says the fish never meets direct flame and cooks on radiant heat from a distance — a single 2015 write-up, the only source we found, so take it as one person’s explanation (checked July 2026). What we can vouch for is the arrangement in the photograph.
The mackerel we did not agree on
Saba no kousou-yaki, mackerel grilled with herbs, ¥990. Whole, head to tail, with cuts along the body and the herbs cooked into them. Grated daikon and a lemon wedge on the side.
One bite named the herb: rosemary, unmistakably, and it carries. This is not a plain shioyaki mackerel that tastes of fish and salt. It is a mackerel with rosemary in it, and the two of us landed in different places. My wife liked it. The other vote went to plain salt-grilled mackerel, which you can get anywhere.
Where it won one of us over was the head. The flesh around the eye — the parts you never get buying a fillet in a supermarket — tasted stronger than the rest of the fish, with a texture nothing else on the plate had.
We wanted a second fish off the genshiyaki list and asked for trout, the head and the fatty belly. Sold out for the day. Buri kama, the collar of a yellowtail, was on, so we took that instead, ¥715.
It looks like a wedge of bone and fin. There is far more in it than that, and it ate bigger than it looked.
What we drank
Draft beer first, ¥660 a glass. It is Suntory, which in Sapporo took a second to absorb; Sapporo Classic is there in medium bottles if that matters.
The otoshi — the small dish you did not order and pay for anyway — was tsubugai, whelk, ¥770 for the two of us. Getting the animal out of its shell in one piece is a skill. My wife wound hers out nearly to the base. The other one broke halfway. Chewy, and thoroughly of shellfish.
Then sake by the glass. Kamikawa Taisetsu, ¥880, a junmai from Kamikawa in Hokkaido, on the grounds that we were in Hokkaido. Kid Natsu no Shippu, ¥660, a junmai ginjo from Wakayama, on the grounds that junmai ginjo is what we both like. (Junmai: rice alone, nothing added. Ginjo: milled further back.) Both were easy, and both made the mackerel go faster.
Third round, craft shochu with soda. GLOW EP05, ¥660, which we first drank in Naha and which my wife had especially liked there: lychee on the nose, no effort to drink. Still very good — just not the same as the first time, which is what first times are. Beside it, Cardamom Take7, ¥660, which smells of cardamom and nothing else. If you like cardamom, that is a recommendation.
What it cost, and whether we would go back
¥7,865 for two, by card: beers ¥1,320, otoshi ¥770, oysters ¥1,210, the herb mackerel ¥990, two sake ¥1,540, buri kama ¥715, two shochu sodas ¥1,320.
We would go back, and we already know what for. Reading about the place afterwards, the house speciality turns out to be an oversized hokke — atka mackerel — sent direct from a fisherman in Rausu and cooked genshiyaki, alongside raw oysters at ¥110 every day of the year, from Akkeshi in Hokkaido and Sanriku in Miyagi (the shop’s own listing, checked July 2026). We ordered neither, because we did not know.
Afterwards, a wine bar called moi
A block south there was a place we had tried once before and found shut. The door is a heavy grey one on a grey landing, two blue velvet chairs beside it and a small black OPEN tag hanging off the handle. Not an obvious door to push the first time.
Inside is small, mostly a counter, run by a young woman who appeared to be the owner. Wine by the glass: Bordeaux, red or white, ¥750. Five or more recommendations of the day from ¥1,000.
We asked what she would suggest and she asked back what we liked, which is the right question and one we are rarely asked. We said: not the daily bottle we drink at home, something a bit unusual. She had several ideas. Half joking, we asked whether any of them were going to be expensive.
“There’s basically nothing over ¥2,000. And if there were, I’d check with you first.” Said smiling, and it settled the evening.
We took two different reds, one each, to compare across the table, then two different whites the same way. We were not hungry by then, which was a shame: the blackboard was full of things we wanted. Beef tendon stewed in red wine (sold out), the curry we could smell inside, a Japanese-style uni peperoncino risotto we could not picture against red wine, an Ezo deer hamburg — venison is lean, and one of us is not keen on it. We ended up on the paper menu with truffle-flavoured fried potato, ¥700.
¥6,900 (about $46), cash only. That is the catch, and for us a real one: we do not carry cash as a rule. A card machine would make this a bar we could drop into.
Walking back we agreed we had found a good one. Then we looked it up. A listing suggests moi is a one-year arrangement, holding the room while another wine bar is on hiatus, which if true would put its end somewhere around September 2026 (a restaurant review site, checked July 2026). It may not be there for long. We opened that door on the one night we passed it while it was open, which appears to have been the only way it was ever going to happen.
The two places together came to ¥14,765 (about $98) for two.
Practical bits
Address, seats, hours, cards, smoking and the English-menu note come from the shop’s official page, checked 18 August 2026.
- Where: Minami 1 Nishi 7, Santo Building 1F, Chuo-ku, Sapporo. Sixty seats. Same central blocks as the Sapporo Prince Hotel, where we stay; we did not time the walk.
- Hours: Monday to Thursday 17:00–22:30, Friday and the day before a holiday 17:00–23:00, Saturday 15:00–22:30, closed Sundays. A chalkboard outside the door on our June visit said the opposite about Sundays, so check before you go.
- Cards: Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Diners, JCB and UnionPay. We paid by card.
- Smoking: all seats smoking-permitted in the evening. Worth knowing before you sit down.
- English menu: none. What we handled was Japanese only, including a handwritten daily board.
- Prices: the printed menu shows the pre-tax price with the tax-included figure beside it, and the bill used the tax-included numbers. Everything above is what we were charged, June 2026, otoshi included at ¥770 for two.
- Booking: we walked in on a Monday evening in June and were seated. We did not check how busy it gets, or whether other customers were from abroad.
- moi: Minami 2 Nishi 7-6-2, Nippo Minami 2-jo Building 2F. Cash only, June 2026. Thirteen seats, all non-smoking, per a restaurant review site, checked July 2026; no website, Instagram only. And see the one-year caveat above — confirm it exists before walking over.
Facts checked 2026-08-18. Prices, hours and menus are what we saw on our visit; they change. Nothing here was sponsored or comped.