Eating high and low in Kyoto

The prevailing mood of any customer arriving at any restaurant can greatly influence how they will enjoy their next couple of hours.

I have never forgotten a restaurant review from 30 years ago whose headline was WIC – words in car – referring to the often-heated discussion between a couple as they drove to the restaurant. What they said to each other, whether they argued, and ultimately the mood in which they arrived at the reception desk would and could affect their perceptions and enjoyment of the restaurant.

Whether I could have arrived in a more relaxed or happy state of mind at the Honke Tankuma Honten restaurant in Kyoto, Japan, I doubt. We had just spent the previous 90 minutes in the Buddhist temple of Ryosoku-in, where I had enjoyed the ancient ceremony of being served matcha by a Buddhist monk, followed by a glass of Pol Roger 2015, before participating in a shoe-removal exercise at the restaurant’s entrance that involved approximately 40 pairs of shoes (and their owners) that were carefully numbered.

Because we were so many, our party was then broken up into separate dining rooms. We were shown into a room conspicuous for its numerous wine glasses in front of each place. And with a view that just got better and better once we had opened the curtains and the sliding glass doors.

From the balcony, on which in a couple of weeks, I was informed, the restaurant will be allowed to put tables and customers, we were able to take in a large section of Kyoto society as they walked, cycled and roller-bladed along the banks of the River Kamogawa. At this time of year the river is empty of the salamanders, up to a metre and a half in length apparently, which come down from the hills. Cherry blossom lined the far side of the river and the relatively low height of the buildings behind allowed a clear view of the hills that surround this historic city.

Having taken all of this in, our focus then returned to the table and the menu. The occasion was the lunch after the award of the PFV (Primum Familiae Vini, a group of 12 top European family-owned wine estates) to Tsutsumi Asakichi Unisho-ten, a Kyoto-based, family-owned company specialising in the application and refinement of lacquer. As a consequence, our first five wine glasses were soon filled with the various charms of Pol Roger’s Cuvée Winston Churchill 2015, Château Haut-Brion Blanc 1996, Marquis de Laguiche 2018 Montrachet, Château de Beaucastel’s Vieilles Vignes Roussanne 2020 Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Antinori’s Cervaro della Sala 2018. Not a bad line-up to kick off with.

That the lunch’s organisers’ choice of Honke Tankuma Honten for this lunch was fully justified soon became obvious. The ownership of the restaurant, established in 1928, spans four generations, and our meal was preceded by the appearance of the current chef’s mother. Smiling, bowing and dressed in an elegant kimono, she welcomed us warmly.

Since 2009, it has been her son, Junichi Kurisu, who has been the chef, responsible for its second Michelin star, and who faced the challenge of composing a menu that could match 12 of the world’s top wines. Although he had not tried all the wines specifically, he is apparently extremely knowledgeable about fine wines. His approach was typically Japanese. The reputation of his restaurant is based apparently on serving monmo dishes, which in Kyoto dialect means ‘as is’, bringing out the natural flavours of the most seasonal dishes. This policy had me reaching immediately for my bag and bringing out my somewhat battered copy of Richard Hosking’s indispensable Japanese Dictionary of Food, published in 1995, which has been the first item into my suitcase whenever I have visited Japan.

It was this book which explained that April is the season for eating bamboo, served here with cuttlefish and udo (spring mountain asparagus), and that ocellated octopus is a particular variety of cephalopod. 

With subsequent courses (there were nine of them), the book also explained that ainame is a Japanese white fish found in rocky waters, and that warabi is a variety of bracken. All were extremely delicious and served beautifully, particularly the small, colourful budded twig from a cherry tree served with our first course.

The profusion of seasonal ingredients continued with the broad beans alongside the cherry salmon with our first two reds, Vega Sicilia, Único 2004 (owner Pablo Álvarez explained the superiority of most vintages ending in 4) and Familia Torres’ Mas de la Rosa 2019 Priorat. This was followed by two slices of roast Wagyu beef with manganji green pepper, a Kyoto speciality, with Sassicaia 2020 and Château Mouton Rothschild 2017. We then reverted to white with glasses of Riesling Schoelhammer 2009 from Hugel and a Scharzhofberger Kabinett 1994 from Egon Müller with the sunomono course. This simple salad course was enlivened with slices of taira-gai, pen-shell clam, set in a Japanese soup stock and topped with the most exquisite ho-shiso flower. Dessert was strawberries, just in season, set in kanten jelly made from red algae, with red-bean paste and a glass of Graham’s 50 Year Old tawny port.

At the end of the meal the chef came in to receive a well-deserved round of applause. And although Japanese restaurants, with a tradition of omakase, multi-course set meals, are used to serving meals such as ours, the speed of service from predominantly middle-aged women, was exemplary. As was the complex wine service from a team of fleet-footed sommeliers.

Honke Tankuma Honten is expensive. According to its website, the 11-course menu is 33,000 yen (£175) per person. Kyoto is not short, however, of far less expensive places to eat and drink.

I had long planned our first meal to be at Kaneyo, the century-old restaurant that specialises in grilled eel, one of Japan’s, and one of my own, favourite dishes. Imagine my disappointment to discover that our free lunch was on Wednesday, the day of the week when this restaurant is closed. A word with the hotel receptionist, and the mention of eel, soon found us en route to a table at Kyo Unawa restaurant instead.

This restaurant is a gem and must be worth a fortune in property terms. It is down a side street, a couple of hundred yards from Louis Vuitton and the massive Daimaru department store. It has ample parking for two cars and is single-storey in an area that is extremely busy – a location that must be the stuff of developers’ dreams.

But it carries on as an extremely popular restaurant – so popular, in fact, that a sign at the entrance, below, instructs those waiting exactly how to queue and to be patient.

At just before 12.30 pm we walked in, thanks to our booking made by the hotel, and were seated at the counter opposite a young female chef who spent the entire time we were there chopping Chinese cabbages, presumably on their way to being pickled.

The menu offers a wide range of dishes – their tempura is particularly good – but I was really only interested in one dish, their eel, for which they claim to only use large, fatty eel weighing over 300 g each. The gleaming lacquered box arrived with five fillets of eel glistening on top of a mound of rice which soon took on the eel’s brown colour. For an eel lover this was wonderful (even JR became a convert) and was quickly enjoyed before I paid a bill of 9,370 yen (£50) for the two of us. I left extremely happy.

I drank a beer with that lunch but on the evening after the PFV lunch extravaganza I proposed something relatively extraordinary: on the assumption that no restaurant anywhere would have a wine list that could equal the wines we had been lucky enough to enjoy at lunch, I thought we should try a sake bar.

We walked past Kyo Unawa and soon found ourselves perched in a corner of the very crowded Masuya Sakaten.

This restaurant, which offers over 40 different sakes, packs a kitchen, the central bar above and seating for about 30 into a remarkably small space that was packed when we walked in at 7.30 on a Thursday evening. Its sake list makes choosing easy. 

We enjoyed glasses of two distinct sakes, one dry the other described as fruity, before sharing a larger glass of a superior full-bodied sake. We were not exactly hungry but with this we managed a plate of braised chicken with a pepper sauce, and fried tofu skins topped with beef miso dressing (below). The whole thing came to 4,460 yen (£24) and made us feel like locals.

Honke Tankuma Honten 168 Izumiyacho, Shimogyo Ward, Kyoto 600-8014; tel: +81 50 3628 1645

Kyo Unawa 553-2 Yaoyacho, Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto 604-8123; tel: +81 75 252 2233

Masuya Sakaten 426-1 Dainichicho, Nakagyo Ward, Kyoto 604-8044; tel: +81 75 256 0221

Every Sunday, Nick writes about restaurants. To stay abreast of his reviews, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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Nick Lander