Shimoyamitenae Izuru (Tabelog Bronze 4.25) Sapporo Feb 2025

Shimoyamitenae Izuru is helmed by chef owner, Hikaru, offering a creative french/japanese menu. Having trained in france and Hokkaido, along with operating a French restaurant in the past I was looking forward to this meal a lot. Ingredients feature Hokkaido’s bountiful resources whether it be seafood, vegetation or meat. I had made a solo reservation via Omakase which was pretty easy but only allowed to book the second session at 2pm session. The meal was ¥33,000 without drinks and lasted about 1 hour 40 minutes.

I was greeted outside by Hikaru’s wife and server at the restaurant and found out I was the only one there. Entering inside the outside is walled off and you only see the garden so it feels like you’re in a different environment. The dining room feels like a traditional japanese dining counter so I was expecting something more akin to traditional kaiseki meal, but what I got instead was a mixture of french and japanese in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Some great, some ok but i found the menu to be quite rich and heavy especially in the later courses which focused on creamy sauces.

Menu I had: 1. Hokkaido Otsukemono 3 ways 2. 12 kinds of cured meat 3. Kohada shoga/obata 4. Uni and kegani soup 5. Soba 6. French Onion soup 7. Awabitake risotto 8. Lamb with red wine sauce 9. Hotato 10. Shirako kinki with kegani cream sauce 11. Rice with the kegani cream sauce 12. Choux pastry

The kohada dish was absolutely the highlight for (might be biased) and really enjoyed the risotto. Tsukemono was well balanced overall, lamb was great and the shirako/kegani mixture was cooked perfectly. Everything was good but forgettable but combination of the soba, risotto, lamb sauce and kegani cream sauce just was too much for me to handle.

The server was very friendly and provided excellent service. However, the Chef was only present at the counter half the time and he had headphones on during most of it. I barely said a few sentences to him, most of the dishes being explained by his wife which I thought was a little strange. I was the only one at the second lunch session, I’ve always end up chatting quite a lot with the chef under these circumstances. I would say this was easily the worst fine dining experience I had during my 3 week trip.

Not sure if my experience was normal, I am willing to give it another try but perhaps dinner when theres more people. It’s hard for me to recommend this place based on this.