Uchoten, Sapporo: the omu-katsu that tastes like okonomiyaki, and a wine tasting we walked into
Uchoten is a taishu-sakaba — a plain, everyday drinking house — on the ground floor of the M’s Building in central Sapporo. We had walked past its door many times on the way up to PALS, the craft beer bar on the third floor of the same building, and had never once gone in.
On Friday 24 April 2026 we did, and ate something neither of us had eaten before. Then, looking for a second place, we walked into a wine tasting.
The night: ¥8,218 (about $55) at Uchoten, ¥10,700 (about $71) at the wine shop, ¥18,918 (about $126) for the two of us, at ¥150 to the dollar, the rate we use here.
April in Sapporo was getting colder by the day rather than warmer, and the night before had been three places, so the plan was small: two places, both close, no walking far in the cold. The morning had been the hotel breakfast buffet, its own story.
The counter until 19:00, and good sake first
Uchoten opens at 17:00 and we came through the noren a few minutes after; one other group was already seated. Had we booked? We had not, so: the counter, until 19:00. Both of us prefer the counter, so that read as luck rather than a limit — and it put a clock on the evening.
The sake list here is long, so we had settled it before sitting down: good sake first, before we get drunk.
Number 08 on the list — Eikou Fuji Ibuki, junmai daiginjo, from Yamagata. ¥1,900 (about $13) for one go, 180ml, poured into a frosted glass carafe.
The otoshi — the small dish you did not order and pay for anyway — was edamame. My wife took one and stopped: there was dashi in it. Simmered in stock rather than boiled in salt, by the taste of it. An otoshi with work in it is a good sign.
Toro-saba, raw and seared
Nama toro-saba, sashimi and seared on one plate: ¥1,880. This is the dish the place is known for, the one regulars are said to always order.
It looked enormous in the photograph. What arrived was four slices of each — between two people with sake in front of them, the right amount.
The fish was fatty all the way through, with none of the smell mackerel gets when it is not fresh.
One of us asked which side was better. The seared one, said the other: the toastiness makes it a different fish.
Salt-simmered offal, and a dish limited to five a day
Shio motsu-ni, ¥798, from the section of dishes the house is proud of: the house’s salt version — the point is that you taste the offal. Fatty, springy, good.
Then the menu did the thing that works on one of us: five a day only — Tokachi wagyu toro-liver, tare only — ¥380.
“You have no defence against the word limited,” my wife said, with a look. She is right, and she does not much like raw meat. We ordered it anyway, together.
It arrived looking fresh and carefully made. We both landed in the same place: fine, not more than that. Trying it was its own small satisfaction for the one of us who needed it to be.
Two lemon sours, one of them a memory
Next round, ¥680 each: the Uchoten Royal Lemon Tea Sour and the Zenryoku Suppai Lemon Sour Dry — “all-out sour”, dry. The dry one was sour, which is what we wanted; the tea sour was on the sweet side, and neither of us has much use for sweet drinks.
The tea one took a minute: it tasted like something we could not name, and then we named it — the powdered lemon tea that came in a big tin when we were children. Both of us, at once.
The omu-katsu
Last order came round. We asked the staff for help with a final dish and were pointed at the ebi-zaasai, shrimp with zha cai, the runaway favourite among the house dishes. Neither of us could commit.
Then we saw it: ganso fuwa-toro omu-katsu, ¥1,200 (about $8). Ganso means the original.
“What sort of dish is that?” — “An omelette on top of a cutlet.”
“There is a cheese one and a plain one. Which do you recommend?” — “That is down to taste.”
First visit, so we took the plain one. That was the right call.
A katsu — a breaded cutlet, deep-fried to order and still crisp. A soft, barely-set omelette laid over it. Then brown sauce, mayonnaise and katsuobushi. One mouthful and we looked at each other.
“This is okonomiyaki.”
Which it is: the crunch of the cutlet, the give of the omelette, and the sauce-mayonnaise-katsuobushi that makes okonomiyaki taste like okonomiyaki. Neither of us had eaten the combination before.
My wife ate in silence for a while, then put it plainly: “This is an invention.”
When she says invention, that is a verdict. We stayed until the counter’s time was up.
What Uchoten cost
¥8,218 (about $55) for the two of us: the go of sake at ¥1,900, toro-saba ¥1,880, omu-katsu ¥1,200, shio motsu-ni ¥798, two lemon sours at ¥680 each, the toro-liver ¥380, and two otoshi at a price we did not write down.
We drank faster than we like because of the 19:00 line, which is what walking in without booking buys you. “Next time we reserve, and take our time,” one of us said, and the other agreed.
The wine tasting we walked into
We were not finished, so we went looking for a second place. The plan was Izakaya Chiba — full. We got in there eventually, on a later trip.
On the way back toward the hotel we passed PINOT, a wine shop on a street we walk most days in Sapporo. It runs a bar on certain evenings, and that night it was open.
“Owners of shops like this can be a bit prickly,” one of us said going in. The owner met us with a smile, and that was the end of that.
We had also walked into a tasting: the shop was pouring one of its suppliers’ wines. Things you would not normally drink at this price, the owner said, are at a special price tonight.
So we would take all of them — except the ¥3,000 (about $20) glass of red, the most expensive on the table, which we let go.
Seven pours, 60 ml each per the menu, shared between the two of us:
- Sparkling: Crémant de Bourgogne, Vivienne Gabrielle
- White: Ch. Magdeleine Bouhou 2023, Bordeaux
- White: Sauvignon Blanc 2025, Southern Right, South Africa
- White: Chardonnay 2023, Frog’s Leap, Napa Valley
- Rosé: Rosé 2022, Raeburn, Sonoma County, California
- Red: Pinotage 2023, Southern Right, South Africa
- Red: Maverick Billich “The Red” SGM 2013 — shiraz, grenache, mourvèdre — Barossa, Australia
Every one tasted like something we do not normally drink, and we both enjoyed that. The other customers looked like regular wine drinkers, and the room was quiet.
The cheese and jamón board
One serving of the cheese and jamón board, ¥1,900 (about $13), which came with more on it than that suggests: Brillat-Savarin, a double-cream white mould given an extra month; Comté at 8 months; Mimolette at 22; Bleu d’Auvergne; and jamón serrano aged 30 months, with raisins and bread.
For a second place, with wine, it was exactly the right thing to have.
“It is close to the hotel. When we want wine, we come here,” we agreed on the way out.
The bill was ¥10,700 (about $71) for two: the seven pours and the board. The tasting menu that night listed the six regular pours at ¥1,100 each and the Napa chardonnay at ¥1,500; that adds up to ¥8,100 for the wine, and with the ¥1,900 board comes to ¥10,000, so there is a ¥700 gap in our own arithmetic that we cannot explain from our notes.
Would we go back
To Uchoten, yes, with a reservation. The counter-until-19:00 arrangement is a fast way through a long menu, and the menu deserved better than we gave it. The omu-katsu is the reason to come: ¥1,200 for a combination we had not met before, in a place where the otoshi has stock in it. The toro-saba and the motsu-ni both held up; the five-a-day liver was fine and no more.
To PINOT, yes — decided at the counter, not afterwards. If you want wine in Sapporo rather than beer or sake, a shop that sells bottles and pours them at night is worth having on the list.
Two places, both close, on a night too cold to go further. One turned a fried cutlet into okonomiyaki and the other happened to be open for a tasting. We would like to claim we planned it.
Practical bits
- Uchoten: Minami 3 Nishi 7-7-28, M’s Building 1F, Chuo-ku, Sapporo; phone 011-215-1303 (store listing, checked July 2026). The beer bar PALS is on the third floor of the same building.
- Hours and seats: opens at 17:00. We walked in just after, on a Friday in April 2026, without booking, and were given the counter until 19:00. Reserve if you want an unhurried evening.
- Cheaper nights: a listings site shows all drinks at ¥500 Monday to Thursday (checked July 2026). We were there on a Friday and did not see it.
- PINOT: Minami 2 Nishi 10, Aoi Building 1F, Tanukikoji 10-chome — a wine shop that runs a bar on some evenings. It stocks around 800 bottles from about ¥1,300, all tasted by the owner first (the shop’s site, checked July 2026); local coverage says it moved here from Susukino in June 2024.
- The tastings: that site lists a tasting event twice a month, on Saturdays (checked July 2026). Ours was a Friday supplier tasting, so ask rather than count on it.
- Prices: April 2026, itemised above. ¥8,218 at Uchoten and ¥10,700 at PINOT, both for two.
- English menus, cards, smoking, and how many other visitors from abroad were in either room: we didn’t check. Uchoten’s menus and signs were in Japanese, and so was the service.
Facts checked 2026-08-19. Prices, hours and menus are what we saw on our visit; they change. Nothing here was sponsored or comped.