mare Hachikyo

mare Hachikyo occupies a single open-kitchen counter in Chuo Ward, Sapporo, where chef Kazuki Kosuga runs a ten-course omakase built entirely around Hokkaido ingredients. Kosuga trained as head chef within a Michelin-recognized restaurant group before opening this space, and the cooking draws on Japanese technique alongside French, Spanish, Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese methods.

The menu changes monthly and is reservation-only, with every seat facing the kitchen so the preparation of each dish happens in view of the diner. The written menu lists only the origin and the raw ingredient, not a description of the finished dish, so what arrives at the counter is left as a surprise. Past courses have featured potatoes aged 540 days and scallops raised over eight years, alongside seasonal Hokkaido seafood and produce chosen for the day.

The restaurant is open nightly from 18:00 to midnight. At roughly 15,000 yen per person, it sits in the upscale tier, consistent with its hard-to-book, counter-only format. Reservations are taken by phone rather than online, and given the limited seating, booking ahead is advisable.

The setting is deliberately understated for an upscale counter: a quiet, adult-oriented room meant to feel unpretentious rather than formal, with the live preparation at the counter as much a part of the experience as the food itself.