Kyoto.... A Moveable Feast

... although by the end of the day it was more like a Moving Waddle....

I’m sure there are shrines, temples, museums, and other cultural artifacts in Kyoto, but we seem to spend most of our time in the belly of this town… in restaurants, markets, bakeries, pastry shops and bars.

As wonderful as Moroccan, or Indian, cuisines are, what compares to the unusual nature, the quality, and combination of ingredients, found in the Japanese kitchen?

Today we set out explore this kitchen. This included a visit to what many here consider to be the best ramen house in Kyoto. It turned out to be the best one we’ve ever visited in our life.

But, as they say…

First Coffee…!

Crazed coffee geeks, who think pour-over is the ONLY way to prepare coffee, told me that Kurasu coffee house in Kyoto serves THE best coffee in town. Based on my visit this morning, I’d agree.

Patrons are greeted by a large counter and the staff are exceptionally helpful and make an effort to speak English.

This wood block print (below), which I really like, hangs on the wall. It was created by the father of the gentleman who runs the store….

Kurasu offers beans from six different nations and you can have them poured-over, or “aeropressed” (like a French “presse café”); the permutations to personalize your morning coffee are so complex that you might not get your morning coffee until well into the afternoon!

One of the specialty items they make here is a sensational matcha tea, probably the best one I have ever had.

Matcha is made from ground, shade-grown tea leaves that are known as tencha, usually harvested once a year. World demand is presently so high for Japan’s matcha tea that exports are up more than 25 percent this year over last year and some exporters and domestic suppliers have halted sales to preserve the limited national supply.

They serve matcha cold here…

And hot…. (pictured here with, on the left, an aeropressed blend of beans (from Ethiopia, Guatemala and Costa Rica), crafted as a cappuccino…..

Kurasu Ebisugawa is at 551 Yamanaka-cho, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto.

With coffee in the rearview mirror, it was time to go off and have lunch!

On the way, I noted this scene…

The Japanese will line up for hours just to get into a specialty restaurant, or store. This (below) is a line-up to get into a donut shop that was not going to open for another hour-and-a-half. For donuts? Are they nuts?

For lunch, we headed to what locals think is the BEST ramen restaurant in Kyoto, Menya Inoichi.

The 10-seat counter and few small tables account for the long wait times to get in; there are no plan-ahead reservations. You must show up at 10 am sharp to be near the head of the queue.. then after a 30-minute, or longer, wait, you get a number.. and have to wait again until your number is called.

We got lucky and the wait-time to get a ticket.. and then to dine …was under 90 minutes, a local record!

And the ramen? Out of this world.

Without question, the best I have ever had anywhere.

Forget what you think of as ramen if you’ve had it in America or Canada. THIS is what all the others want theirs to be.

The kitchen at Menya Inoichi is small….

… but the portions are large…. we started with pork chasu, two juicy dumplings served with soy sauce and a spicy Keene’s-like mustard.

And then moved on to the main course, ramen.

They offer two versions of umami-rich ramen, one with a white soy stock, one with a darker, mahogany stock. Both are flavored with housemade dashi, a seafood stock made with sea meats, finished with thinly shaved, bonito flakes.

The extremely thin noodles have rich flavor, good bite; they are made with two types of Hokkaido wheat and stoneground whole grains.

I often find ramen in America or Canada to be too salty. The version at Menya Inoichi has umami top notes, not salt. I’ve never had a richer, more satisfying, ramen than this. Not anywhere.

Menya Inoichi is at 1F Ebisuterasu, 528, Ebisunocho, Shimogyo-ku, Kyoto.

Tel: +81 75-353-7413 (but not sure what good this will do you. They don’t take reservations and don’t speak English…)

They start taking lunch reservations at 10 am sharp.. but don’t seat anyone until 11.30 am. Lunch is served until 2 pm. Dinner is served from 5.30 to 10 pm, but it’s the same story about showing up to stand in line to get a number… to wait to be let into the 22-seat boîte.

And Now For The Best Pastries We Have Ever Had!

Coffee…. ramen… we are on a roll! So why stop for anything else.. except to eat some more!

So we headed to Rau Patisserie, an elegant dining salon on the third floor of a hotel called Good Nature.

The two patissiers who operate this destination pastry shop trained in Paris where they opened a pastry shop. But locals started to copy their highly original sweets so the couple moved back home, to Kyoto, to up their game and create pastries even more complex, more difficult, for others to replicate.

And they have knocked the pastry puff out of the park. We have never, not ever, had more original, more delicious, more memorable pastries. Let the photos explain ….

First, you speak with a host who walks you through the 25, or 30, different house-made pastries, wax versions of which are lined up on a marble counter. A great show-and-tell presentation.

We ordered four different pastries and several matcha-based biscuits.

Oka, is a spring-only pastry that is colored and shaped to resemble a hill full of cherry trees. The interior is filled width a rich, creamy, velvet-textured, bergamot mousse of cherries and Tonka bean. You can’t tell from the photo, but this pastry, and the others which follow, are each about the size of an adult’s fist.

Tane was perhaps my favorite of the four pastries we tried. It is filled with a fluffy, rich, creamy mass of crushed hazelnuts, sesame seeds, almonds and apricot seeds.

Midori is a pear-based confection filled with an other-worldly mousse-like center filled with tiny pieces of mango, celery (!), pineapple and even some jasmine tea for subtle background notes.

And finally, we ordered Taki, a chocolate bomb filled with chocolate, cream, and a rich dusting of coffee. There is a resemblance to tiramisu, but only in taste for nothing we have ever seen in a pastry case looks like this. Or tastes quite like this.

I have never had better, more original, pastries than these. You MUST make Rau a pit-stop if you get to Kyoto.

If Michelin rated pastries the way they do restaurants, Rau would easily earn a 3-star Michelin rating.

Enjoying these pastries in the Rau salon is a real trip; very old-world-ish in one respect, but also vey modern.

Order a pot of Rau green tea to help cut the richness of the pastries. The experence is a solid 10 out of 10.

Rau Patisserie is at Inaricho 318, Good Nature Station 3.

Tel: +81-075-352-3724

And Now For Some Street Photos

This evening we are heading to a 1-star Michelin for dinner…. so to get ready for the multi-course event, we walked off some of the day’s calories. This gave me a chance to catch some street color.. so in no particular order…. what I came across….

And finally, the shots everyone is asking to see.. spring cherry blossoms… which brings out the locals, who spend hours photographing themselves in all kinds of garb, under and among the cheery cherry trees.

More to come after tonight’s 1-star Michelin dinner….

Jim