Tag - kyoto-restaurants

 
 

KYOTO RESTAURANTS

Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Nov 13, 2015
Hashinaga: Delicious and relaxed kaiseki cooked by a formidable chef
I am almost certain that I wouldn't survive a day working under chef Noriyuki Hashinaga. I am, however, certain that I could eat his food every day.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Nov 13, 2015
Sept Bistro: Japan-style hamburgers in a French-style restaurant
Japan does adaptive innovation well: just look at the nation's cars, video games and, yes, hamburgers.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Oct 9, 2015
Sobaya Nicolas: Michelin-starred soba that belongs in your memory, not your camera's
If taking pictures of a meal is one of highest forms of flattery in the modern age, then what to make of the restaurants in Japan that forbid photographing what you are about to eat? The best answer I can come up with is that I'm not sure — nor do I have enough space in this review to decipher the contemporary compulsion to document everything.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Oct 9, 2015
Totoya: Fresh seafood donburi beside Kyoto's fish market
While Kyoto's main fish market is off limits to the public most of the year, Totoya, a little seafood restaurant just yards from the market's main entrance, gives you a taste of what's available inside.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Sep 11, 2015
Kyokabutoya: Informal Japanese cuisine in an old wooden townhouse
Yasumasu Ikeda, chef and owner of Kyokabutoya, moved to the Kansai region from Hokkaido more than 15 years ago. After almost a decade of cutting his teeth in the kitchens of Osaka and Kyoto, he opened a Japanese restaurant around 2010. Kyokabutoya is housed in a machiya (traditional wooden townhouse), which is located a stone's throw from a buzzing centuries-old food market in the center of Kyoto.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Sep 11, 2015
Sasaya Iori: Kyoto's 300-year-old sweets shop
The area around Kyoto Station seems to lack the cultural and culinary charms found elsewhere in the city, but this might be changing. A massive restoration of the nearby Higashi Honganji Temple complex will soon be completed and Umekoji Locomotive Museum will be combined into the new Kyoto Railway Museum, making train otakus everywhere happier. Along Shichijo-dori, which runs parallel to the station, a few noteworthy eateries have also taken root, the new flagship store for Japanese sweets cafe Iori being one to look out for.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Aug 7, 2015
Gion Sasaki: Where eel is served in tiny shrines and speaking on phones is banned
On the wall at Gion Sasaki there are two signs depicting mobile phones with lines through them. Bringing your phone with you is allowed, but speaking on it is a no-no. When I visited for lunch, an Asian tourist dining on his own nearby barely put his phone down during the entire nine-course kaiseki meal. He was, I fear, so distracted by apps, messages, news updates and pictures he may have missed one of Kyoto's best meals. I dedicate this review to him, for he was there in body, but that is all.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Aug 7, 2015
Kiln: Incredible burgers for wagyu lovers and vegetarians
Kiln takes its name from the oven at the center of its open kitchen, which is surrounded by communal wooden slabs that seat around 10 diners.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Jul 10, 2015
Ogawa: Dining at a six-seat restaurant in Kyoto's traditional nightlife district
The Kyoto neighborhood of Gion is small but complicated. Wedged between the hills of Higashiyama and the Kamo River, it contains some of Japan's most picturesque and well-trodden streets, but there's also a warren of back-alleys and lanes with bright lights and seedy goings-on.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Jul 10, 2015
Ogawa Coffee: An old-world coffee house without the traditional atmosphere
For a small city, Kyoto is big on coffee. As with every city in Japan, the current "third-wave" coffee boom has brought more choice and quality when it comes to cafes and beans. This is undeniably good news for coffee drinkers. Ogawa Coffee and Inoda Coffee, two Kyoto coffee institutions, both predate the current boom by a long while. However, where they differ, at least in style, is that while Inoda has kept an old-world Japanese kissaten coffee house look, Ogawa is decidedly modern, with (sadly) not a bow tie in sight.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Jun 12, 2015
Minimalist approach to traditional Japanese dining in Kyoto's Gion district
I still find it amusing that so many chefs at high-end Japanese restaurants wear neckties beneath their white chef uniforms. It seems at odds with the temperature and temperament of a kitchen, but I suppose it's no more amusing or wondrous than the traditional chef's hat, that elaborate, elongated white crown worn more for marketing purposes than anything else. In Japan, the chef's necktie, I think, is for presentation purposes: if you are going to serve fabulous looking food you should look the part.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Jun 12, 2015
High-quality soup stock at Kyoto's serious ramen shop
There are two ramen shops well worth visiting in the western outskirts of Kyoto. Distance-wise, they're only a five-minute walk apart, but judging by most other measures they are polar opposites.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
May 8, 2015
Bite-size orchestra gets a standing ovation at Savory in Kyoto
Restaurants tend not to encourage you to play games while you eat. Customers usually pay for a solemn experience that includes an unwritten rule: The more expensive the meal, the more solemn the experience.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
May 8, 2015
Traditional coffee joint Inoda also makes a good breakfast
Inoda is one of Kyoto's long-established coffee chains, and has several outposts dotted around the city, but the cafe and shop on Sanjo Street is a treat, with its space to seat ratio in the region of 10 to 1.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Apr 10, 2015
High-quality meat and hot rocks at Grand Kitchen Tada
The centerpiece of lunch at Grand Kitchen Tada is a blackened hot stone — as black as squid ink — upon which thin slices of wagyu beef fry. The meat is still sizzling as the server places the tray down, with a warning that the stone is hot and inedible. Well, she didn't exactly say the stone was inedible, but may as well have — it's about as obvious as telling me the rock was hot.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Apr 10, 2015
A neoclassic return to the golden age of hamburgers at 58 Diner
In recent times, Japan has offered up a noteworthy list of burgers, with the newest additions being Burger King's "Kuro Burger," followed by a similar version at McDonald's (unsurprising given that one thing you could never accuse either company of is true originality). Here's something more substantial to add to the list: the Neoclassic Burger at 58 Diner, a cafe-diner with a real jukebox, not far from the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. And, unlike the aforementioned burgers, 58 Diner's isn't a gimmick, but a good burger: a thin homemade meat patty made from lean beef and accompanied by red cabbage, fried onions and a layer of scrambled egg all enclosed in a bun.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Mar 10, 2015
All Hale lunch at this Kyoto cafe
To get to Hale you'll have to wrestle your way past the armies of tourists and locals who converge on Nishiki Market — a long, narrow market that sells everything from adzuki beans to unagi (eel).
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Mar 10, 2015
Ryuheisoba offers new enjoyment to Japan's humble noodle
'Go west," U.S. singer Nathalie Merchant implores in her 1995 track "San Andreas Fault." "Paradise is there."
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Feb 10, 2015
Nothing drawn out about Kappo Yamashita
This might be the year of kappo dining for me. Recently, I have often found myself seated at sparse counters opposite small teams of industrious chefs, synchronized by their movements: cutting, peeling, grating, stirring, broiling, searing, tasting and fielding questions from patrons.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KYOTO RESTAURANTS
Feb 10, 2015
Sweet treats await Valentines at Qu'il Fait Bon
I would like to go back to Qu'il Fait Bon on Valentine's Day, but I think humans would sooner live on Mars before I'd secure a table there on that occasion.

Longform

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