Susukino Jingisukan 5 Jo

There many, many “Jingisukan” (lamb BBQ) specialty restaurants in Sapporo. This is one of those in the Susukino area of the city. The entrance to the restaurant is a little confusing as its entrance leads directly to a different restaurant on the ground floor. Instead, you have to go upstairs to... get to this restaurant. All tables are traditional Japanese-style and therefore one has to take his or her shoes off. But every table comes with a pit for stretching one’s legs. At this restaurant, you choose what you’d like to eat from the menu (no English), instead of “all you can eat within a certain period of time for a fixed price.” Since we cannot eat too much at one time, we preferred this style to the “all you can eat” style. We were there early in the evening and it was empty. A waiter had lots of time and he was kind enough to patiently explain the menu in details. We ordered two meat dishes (fresh lamb slices and marinated lamb slices) and one vegetable dish (slices of eringi mushroom, cabbage, onion and green peppers) for BBQ. A charcoal hibachi was placed right on the table. With good cold beer (not Sapporo Beer, but Suntory Beer), the food was very good with the restaurant’s own dipping sauce. It was about US$32 for both of us, including the beer. We could have eaten another $15 or so of meat, but we were glad we didn’t eat too much.

Visited July 2015