2 Best Restaurants in Hakodate, Hokkaido

Meiji Hakodate Beer Hall

$$

This seaside hall serves seafood as well as a huge variety of other foods from pastas to salads that can keep just about anyone satisfied. The soaring rafters are beautiful and the atmosphere is lively. Its spaciousness and conviviality are typical of Hokkaido and, although it's in a tourist complex, even locals like the wide range of seasonal specials from a menu that changes monthly.

14--12 Suehiro-cho, Hakodate, Hokkaido, 040-0064, Japan
0138-27–1010
Known For
  • local craft brews on tap
  • Hakodate's specialty ika somen (raw squid thinly sliced and resembling noodles)
  • superfresh sashimi sets

Yamasan Michishita-Shoten

$$

Although squid is not the only thing on the menu, it is fresh—your squid is pulled flapping from the tank and might return minutes later sliced, with squid-ink black rice, delicious slivers of still-twitching flesh, soup, and pickles. If squid isn't your thing, don't fret, the restaurant has plenty of other seafood, and a picture menu for easy selection. Look for a sign with red letters on a yellow background.

9--15 Wakamatsu-cho, Hakodate, Hokkaido, 040-0063, Japan
0138-22–6086
Known For
  • reasonably priced rice bowl topped with uni (sea urchin), awabi (abalone) and ikura (salmon roe)
  • crab-cream croquette
  • squid in many ways, including raw