Yoichi LOOP

We stayed as a couple mid week in July. 2 night stay, with 1 night dining in the restaurant.
The restaurant is highly recommended. The kitchen crew and service staff are first rate, and the manager/sommelier (Takashi Kuratomi) is a welcoming, multilingual, and highly professional manager. The manager and some of the staff speak fluent English.
The night we dined there were 14 covers in the restaurant and the place had a nice atmosphere. The menu was all locally sourced and they made changes to allow my partner different choices to avoid fish. (See picture).
The wines were all from Hokkaido and an amazing selection of high quality sparkling, white, red and dessert wines. (See picture of our wine picks).
This is a destination restaurant and should be on everybody’s travel list.
David W, July 2025

I loved this hotel and the town Yoichi!
Pros:
Convenient Location — next to JR, despite we drove. Right across from Nikki distillery tour entrance. Decent coffee shop, seafood market, bistro etc within walking distance.
Delicious Meals — breakfast Saba ramen (unique and umami! ), and excellent lunch tasting menu with Yoichi wine pairing (one of the few restaurants that serves the legendary Takahiko). All in a tastefully decorated restaurant.
Spacious Room — studio twin accommodated our family of three well with plenty of space to store and maneuver our full size luggages.
Cons:
No lift — not uncommon in Japan, ladies may have difficulty hauling full size luggage up to 3/F. Staff were very eager to help though.
Room cleaning — I suspect outsourced. Although checkout time was 12 pm, when we returned at 11:30 am after our Nikki tour, the cleaners were already cleaning. Our loose items were put into a rubbish bag and along with our bags, the cleaners placed outside our room. We reported to the front desk and the staff apologized.
Overall, the pros outweighed the cons. I am confident the hotel will make appropriate improvement. Loop will be my first choice when I visit Yoichi again.

We had a wonderful stay in Loop for 2 nights.
I would like to thank the lady staff who help us during check in. What’s a regret that I forgot to ask her name. She tried to help us to take the luggage’s to 3/F (it’s better not to take big luggage as no elevator in the hotel) and she gave very good recommendations for dinner.
The room is spacious with an open kitchen.
What we most enjoyed was the wine and dinner😋
The service manager Kuratomi San gave us advice for choosing the wine. And he also told us the story and history of the wine production in Yoichi.
Not the traditional style wine but I can say every wine maker in Yoichi having their only style.
The food was good and I really love the seafood in Hokkaido.
I sincerely thanks everyone in the Hotel for making a very comfortable stay for us.
I hope to see you all next summer 🙏🏻

Wine crisis in Yoichi?
We visited this hotel in October 2024 as we were interested in trying the wine from Yoichi and because of the good reviews we read about the quality of produce offered here. We booked through the hotel's website and the room was 500 Euro including dinner for 2 and wine pairing (40 ml per glass, no breakfast available) — so expectations were rather high. Coming from Europe, we are perhaps too familiar with the Mediterranean-inspired cuisine the chef aspires to and too accustomed to good wines, in particular from France and Germany. So we were expecting something at the same level, perhaps with a Japanese twist.
Dinner consisted of 9 courses which were paired with 9 different local wines. The quality of the food was just average and overall lacking seasoning, some of the dishes had turned cold by the time they were served. Overall, we found the food neither innovative nor memorable, but it was OK. The wine was a different story though: several of the wines we were offered were simply undrinkable because of obvious flaws. The Takahiko we had been looking forward to tasting (we were served the Yoichi-Nobori Aihara Passetoutgrain and not the Pinot Noir) produced a strange foam in the glass, as if it had continued fermentation in the bottle. Other wines tasted oxidized, which left us leaving 4 glasses undrunk. The strangest one was an orange Pét-Nat attempt which was paired with the squid paella. None of the wines we were served showed length or elegance.

The dinner and wine were amazing and it was a blissful time.
However, there were many concerns about the hotel, so I will include those in my review.
(Good points)
・The restaurant is really wonderful. A variety of dishes using local ingredients and Hokkaido wine to match. I was happy that I was able to taste not only wines that are hard to come by, such as Domaine Takahiko, but also really good wines.
・The customer service of the restaurant staff is also excellent. Each step was explained in detail and I enjoyed it.
(What I was curious about)
・A few hours after making the reservation, I received a phone call saying, ``I've made a double booking, so I'd like you to change the room, '' and was told that the change fee would be 3, 000 yen. I didn't understand why we had to pay an additional fee due to the other party's circumstances.
・The room I was changed to was a "standard double" room that was not listed on any website, and it was smaller than I had heard. It was a shame that the bathroom, which seems to be attached to a house, took up a lot of space and there was no space to sit and spend time. I wish I could at least post a photo somewhere.
・The woman at the reception was not professional. I guess I wasn't expecting this question, so I fell silent and tried to cover it up with a bitter smile, which made me uncomfortable.
・Coffee and tea after dinner were charged separately.

Nice small hotel. Room is very large compared to most in Japan. Staff was wonderful. Across the street from JR station and less than a block from Nikka. Bed was very very firm which made it hard to sleep, but no stars taken off as I’m a larger American and used to sleeping on soft beds. Good Wi-Fi, hotel was as quiet as they get. I’d stay here again!

We enjoyed a lot with the wine and food. They serve Hokkaido wine which is hard to find in the market. And, the wine and food is delicious and perfectly match. The wine pairing menu is highly recommended for those who love eating and drinking. Oishii.

The hotel room I stayed in was adequate. The sound insulation was nonexistent so I was awoken in the morning by a noise of snow being cleared by heavy construction machinery.
However, the dinner service at the restaurant was perhaps the best example of local farm to table fine dining with all ingredients sourced from yoichi or nearby within Hokkaido. The chef trained in Michelan establishments in France and Spain which is reflected by his thoughtful execution of dishes which highlight the quality and freshness of the ingredients.
The local wine pairing run by the sommelier, So-san, was a beautiful match, mostly highlighting each dish by similar levels of sweetness, acidity & minerality found within the wines. Some pairings were based in contrast which broke up the flow of dishes in a playful and refreshing way. The highlights were all the white wines, the scallop dish, crab paela and the double dessert!

Exquisite food with the best of Japanese wines. The sommelier, Kuratomi-san, was very knowledgeable and happy to share his stories of the chosen wines with gourmet. Go for the Wine Pairing course if you can!

We went for Valentine's Day dinner where only a course was available for 6, 000¥. I want to thank the staff for graciously accomodating our food preferences as we had somebody who doesn't eat seafood, the other oysters; but sadly, the meal failed to meet expectations. Food portions were small — even for a course meal, the interval between each dish took too long, we were left waiting uncomfortably for the next one, and taste was so-so. I had better food before. One of us couldn't eat seafood, so they had to change our clam paella into pork, but it tasted weird, and pretty much just allover oily… and burnt. I'm not new to Paella since I'm Filipino, so I'm wondering if they know what paella's really supposed to taste like. I did enjoy the squid croquette for appetizer, fried oysters, bread and chocolate cheesecake at the end of the meal but I don't recommend this place and wouldn't even think of coming back. I saw Google reviews for the place that was why I decided to go, but I think reviews were mostly for their cheesecake? I'm not really sure. Anyway, it wasn't worth the 6k I paid for.