A note on the words: jingisukan is Hokkaido’s mutton and lamb grilled on a domed cast-iron pan, named after Genghis Khan; yamawasabi is horseradish, grated and served here in white soy; and mutton means sheep over a year old, deeper and heavier than lamb. Prices are as of this writing (August 2026).
Matsuo Jingisukan Akasaka on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
I want to eat something good today as well. This is Hangover Meshi.
This time, to the Akasaka branch of Matsuo Jingisukan. Every so often one simply wants jingisukan. And this place does it all-you-can-eat, which makes it rather easy to use when there is a crowd of you. So: Matsuo Jingisukan for the first time in a while. Let us eat.
This time we took the all-you-can-eat mutton jingisukan and added the all-you-can-drink on top. Right — in we go!
First, a beer.
The full set arrives to begin with.
For a start, Matsuo Jingisukan is quite unlike ordinary jingisukan.
Jingisukan these days tends towards unmarinated fresh lamb, but this house has held to its “marinate it in the sauce first” style since it opened — the representative soul food of Hokkaido, you might say. You dip it in egg as though it were sukiyaki, or eat it with yamawasabi. It feels less like jingisukan than like a genre of its own: “Matsu-jin”.
This time we chose mutton, from a sheep over a year old. Mutton is the standard in Hokkaido, and mutton is precisely the flavour Matsuo was founded on. If lamb is the gentle taste, mutton is the deep one. If you are here for Matsuo Jingisukan, take the mutton.
And the set contains…!
Beyond that you can order rice and udon, and the yamawasabi and the “Sakai family genki egg” — garnish? condiment? — are unlimited as well.
Build the vegetables up like an embankment on the dedicated domed jingisukan pan,
lay the meat on top, then pour the sauce in with a great sloshing rush. “Grill the meat, simmer the vegetables” is the Matsuo way.
They set it up for you at the start, and the moment the meat touches the pan the sweet apple-and-onion sauce hisses and catches, and the fragrance rolls out across the table. One mouthful of the grilled meat and the depth peculiar to mutton is there — but because it has been thoroughly marinated, and although no garlic is used at all, there is no muttony smell whatever, just savour at exactly the right pitch. Bite down hard and the fibres come apart, sauce and fat mingling and running. I had thought of mutton as tough, but the mutton at “Matsu-jin” is tender.
Since they are there, let us use the condiments. Coat it in the genki egg from the Sakai farm in Kuriyama, Hokkaido, and it turns sukiyaki-ish, the sweetness doubling. (Apparently this is a Tokyo-area way of eating it that does not exist in Hokkaido. I had no idea.) Put yamawasabi on top and the gentle heat of the white soy cuts the fat cleanly, making it very easy to keep eating.
To finish, udon simmered in the sauce that has pooled around the rim of the pan. Sauce udon that has soaked up all the mutton fat and the essence of the vegetables is obviously going to be good. But we had eaten so much on the all-you-can-eat that there was hardly room left for udon, so I had a taste and stopped there. I envy people who can eat a great deal.
So: Matsuo Jingisukan for the first time in ages, and ninety minutes is not quite enough. I want about three hours! Still, the room is clean, the smokeless roasters mean the smoke does not bother you, and since no garlic is used there is no smell problem even if you have something on tomorrow. I do not know about a formal dinner, but one might well come for jingisukan rather more casually than this.
Matsuo Jingisukan Akasaka (jingisukan / Akasaka Station, Akasaka-mitsuke Station, Tameike-sanno Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.5
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
