New Chitose ANA Suite Lounge: Sapporo Classic, Hokkaido bread, and the meal on the flight home

The last day of five nights in Sapporo, 25 April 2026 — what the ANA Suite Lounge at New Chitose stocks, the one pairing that did not work, and what four evenings of drinking came to.

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The last day of a trip is the cheapest one and nobody writes about it. Ours was 25 April 2026, the sixth day of a stay at the Sapporo Prince Hotel, and our spending for it came to ¥0: the last breakfast at the hotel buffet, then the ANA Suite Lounge at New Chitose, then a meal on the flight to Haneda that was already inside the fare.

It was also the morning the buffet finally said no to us.

Here is what is in that lounge, what the meal on the plane was, and — at the end — what four evenings of drinking in Sapporo actually cost the two of us.

The last breakfast, and the bowl we did not get

The plate looked like every other morning of that stay: big, crisp asparagus, grilled Hokkaido bacon, miso soup with tororo kombu stirred in, salmon chanchan-yaki, grilled hokke — that was the day’s fish in the rotation — and a small bowl of pork over rice, with salad and fruit around the edges.

The thing missing from it was the ikura bowl. Over four mornings we had negotiated our way up from three spoonfuls of salmon roe to five at the live station. On this morning a different member of staff was standing there, and the answer was: “Sorry, we don’t do ikura bowls.” One of us began to say that they had made one the day before, and then didn’t say it. We are not people who push.

“Chef’s selection means it depends on the chef” was the conclusion we reached back at the table, and it is the whole lesson. Four days of careful negotiation back to zero on the way to the airport. The buffet has its own article if you want the rest of it.

We carried that out through checkout, and were otherwise very happy with the stay. The hot spring bath, the buffet and the drinking near the front door is a combination that suits us, and we said we would come back. “The length was about right.” “There are still places we want to eat at, so a little longer would be fine.” “But the beds here are firm enough to make your backside ache, so five nights is probably the limit.”

The ANA Suite Lounge at New Chitose

We had never been in this one. On the way out we had used the Suite Lounge at Haneda for the first time as well — two firsts in six days, which struck us as a lot of first times for one trip.

Seats first, then the beer, which here is Sapporo Classic — the lager sold only in Hokkaido. It comes out of self-pour machines with the beer’s own “only in Hokkaido” panels stuck to them, which is either marketing or a public service, depending on how you look at it.

The food, as at Haneda, is built on carbohydrates: onigiri with hijiki and mochi-mugi, inari sushi, futomaki rolls. What is different is that the labels keep saying Hokkaido. The rice in the onigiri and the inari sushi is Nanatsuboshi grown here. The soft raisin roll has Hokkaido fresh cream in the dough. The English salt bread is made with Hokkaido wheat and salt from the Okhotsk coast. The moist butter muffin has Hokkaido milk in it. For the last stop before you leave the island, that is a nice bit of thinking.

We took the salt bread, the butter muffin, an inari sushi and a salmon onigiri.

The bread and the muffin were good — wheat flavour in the first, butter in the second, and the Okhotsk salt genuinely there rather than implied. “The bread’s good.” “I’d want this at home.” The inari sushi was plump and perfectly decent, the sushi rice doing its job.

Then the one that did not work. The salmon onigiri was wrong next to a Sapporo Classic. The rice was good, the salted salmon was salted about right, and the two things together were further apart than we had pictured. “Tea would suit this.” “Maybe beer and a salmon onigiri are meant to be enjoyed separately.” You do not find that out by reading about it.

We stopped there deliberately. There was a meal coming.

The meal on the flight to Haneda

Two whites were on offer that evening, so we asked for both and compared them.

Then the tray, and the lids came off in order. On the left: dashi-maki tamago, a kabocha dumpling, braised pork belly. Beside them: young chicken set with myoga, burdock simmered sweet and salty, scallop with herring roe. In the cold corner: rape blossoms and fuki dressed with sesame miso, a pork fillet katsu under demi-glace, and yomogi tofu with black syrup. The main was chicken grilled in white soy sauce under a happo-an sauce, and the rice was cooked with shirasu and fuki. Miso soup and the day’s tea sweet on the side. The card at the seat put the whole thing at 616 kcal, not counting the soup and the sweet.

The hot chicken was good. The shirasu and fuki rice smelled of spring — “the fuki is doing the work”, “you can taste the season” — and the cold things were the ones that kept the wine moving: the burdock, the sesame-dressed rape blossoms, the pork fillet katsu with its demi-glace. Partway through we ordered a bottle of red and split it in half.

“We ate and drank right to the end.” “Six days. Well done, us.”

What the six days of drinking cost

None of that last day reached a bill, and neither did the first one — both were travel days that ended in a lounge seat and then an aircraft seat. Everything we actually paid for happened on the four evenings in between, at ¥150 to the dollar, the rate we use here.

Two people, four nights out, under $500 of eating and drinking, all of it reached on foot from the hotel door. All 14 places we have walked to from that hotel are in a separate piece, if you want the addresses.

Would we do the same last day again

Yes, with two adjustments. At New Chitose we would take the salt bread and the muffin again and leave the salmon onigiri alone while the Sapporo Classic is in front of us. And we would keep eating lightly in the lounge, because the meal on the plane is the better meal — it is the one with wine, a hot dish and a season in it.

The rest of it we would not change. A hotel with no lounge, a bath, a buffet you can get attached to, four evenings out on foot, and a last day that costs nothing.

Practical bits

• Everything here is from Saturday 25 April 2026. Lounge stock, wine lists and buffet rules change.
• The lounge and the in-flight meal cost us nothing on the day — the lounge came with the ticket, the meal was included in the fare. How you get into an ANA Suite Lounge is a status-and-fare question and we did not check the current rules, so look them up before you plan around it.
• Sapporo Classic is sold only in Hokkaido. In this lounge it comes from self-pour machines rather than a bartender.
• The lounge food we saw was mostly carbohydrates: onigiri, inari sushi, futomaki, a raisin roll, salt bread, a butter muffin. If you want dinner before a flight, this is not dinner.
• The menu card at our seat was in Japanese, with a numbered diagram of the tray and allergen icons. Whether an English version exists, we didn’t check.
• Wine on the flight: two whites and a red, poured at the seat. The red arrives as a bottle, which is why we could split one.
• English menus in the lounge, card payment, opening hours, how busy it gets at other times of day: we didn’t check.

In the air, with the wine landing, we went back over the six days out loud, in order. A Sapporo you book for the drinking near the front door, rather than for anything you are supposed to see, turns out to be a very good Sapporo. Next trip, the same shape — and, if we get the right morning, the ikura bowl.

Facts checked 2026-08-20. Prices, hours and menus are what we saw on our visit; they change. Nothing here was sponsored or comped.