Just three square meters, seating four — Sapporo's smallest soba shop.

Mameguraya Soba

The signature dish, niku-soba, is 550 yen. The noodles are a thick, flat-cut style rarely seen in Sapporo, and they cling beautifully to the rich pork-based broth. The simmered pork, slowly finished in a special sauce, is thick-cut and generous in portion. The curry rice, with free extra-large servings, is a labor of love, slowly simmered at just the right heat to bring out the full sweetness of beef tendon and onion. The beef stew rice is also recommended. This shop is actually run by the owner of a charcoal-grill yakiniku restaurant, so the quality of the meat is guaranteed.

The shop is simply tiny — once the four-person capacity is reached, there's no room to move. The kitchen ceiling follows the underside of a staircase, sloping at an angle, so cooking happens with a tilted head. "It might look like a joke of a shop, but the food is serious," says Tanaka, who runs the place. Despite opening in such an unlikely setting, the owner's genuine playful spirit — the belief that "just being delicious isn't enough to be interesting" — comes through in every corner.