5 Best Restaurants in Niigata

Benkei Pier Bandai, sometimes referred to as Benkei Pia Bandai due its Japanese pronunciation, is a great place to go for conveyer belt sushi in Niigata. Here, they source all their fish and rice from the local island of Sado, just across the water. The fact that everything is sourced so nearby means you get fresh and delicious fish every time.

If you fancy watching the sushi chefs at work and grabbing your food off the conveyor belt, pull up a chair at the counter. Otherwise, take a table seat or head to one of the rooms for a traditional-style seat on the floor. This is a popular restaurant, so make sure to allow time for a bit of a wait outside.

Ikanosumi Niigata Ekimae is just a 3-minute walk from Niigata Station, making it a good option for those just getting in to town. Ikanosumi is an izakaya, which is a type of traditional pub or tavern, offering various types of alcohol and an all-you-can-drink menu. But where they really shine is in their variety of fish dishes.

The restaurant prides itself on serving fresh fish daily, with a menu that changes throughout the seasons and depending on the catch of the day. Their Niigata specialty is the blackthroat seaperch, known as nodokuro locally, which is cooked on charcoal for a richer flavor.

If you’re looking for soba noodles, Kojimaya CoCoLo Niigata is the place to find them. It’s easy to find too, right within the station building. While regular soba noodles in Japan are made primarily with buckwheat, here they serve a local specialty known as hegi soba.

Hegi soba is made with a type of seaweed called funori as the binding agent for the noodles, and served on a square dish called a hegi. The taste doesn’t differ much from regular soba noodles, but the texture is more bouncy and slippery. At Kojimaya CoCoLo Niigata you can eat the local noodles with fried food like tempura or katsu, in a soup with duck, or in various other sets offered throughout the year.

Tonkatsu Masachan Nuttari Honten is famous among locals for its delicious tonkatsu. Tonkatsu is a breaded and deep-fried pork cutlet, and at this Niigata restaurant, their specialty is tare katsu, where the same dish is lightly covered in a sweet and salty soy-based sauce.

The homey restaurant is about a 20-minute walk from Niigata Station, but their delicious pork dishes are certainly worth it. If you can’t eat pork though, don’t despair, as they offer chicken and seafood, as well as some beef.

For a hearty and meaty meal, Ramen Ittoya is probably your best bet in Niigata. About a 20-minute walk from Niigata Station, or 12 minutes by bus, this ramen restaurant is known for what they call their “W Soup”. W in Japan is often used as shorthand for “double”, and in this case, their W Soup means a rich broth made of both seafood and pork.

One of their most popular dishes is their kasane shoyu ramen, which comes with a thick slice of homemade cha siu pork, a boiled egg, and seasoned bamboo shoots called menma.