Dinner in Arashiyama


Yummy Yodofu

I went to the restaurant recommended by the couple on the train Seizanso-do. It's right across from the train station, really, but it has its own little garden and it was a little hard to find.

Now here's an interesting twist. I asked two different people on the street where this place was. The first guy was probably 19 or 20. First I said the name. He didn't know. Then I showed him my map (Lonely Planet) which has the Kanji written. As I said "Seizanso-do" he said something else. Then he asked about the next place up though I was clearly pointing to Seizanso-do. I think what happened was that he read the Kanji and didn't know the specific characters. I'm sounding it out phonetically (the beauty of an alphabet) while he may have been totally at a loss from not knowing a single character. Granted it may be one that's no longer used, it being the name of an old temple or person, I don't know. So for me to ask him where Seizanso-do was, the map was useless.

I find the place and I didn't know why they were hesitant about letting me in to eat. I though (A) I'm foreign, or (B) I'm just one person. But they sat me and served me all of the dishes at once. It turns out they close at 6 pm. It was 5 when I arrived so it all worked out.

Here's a dinner wrap-up.

It starts with a cube of silken tofu in a soy puddle with grated ginger. The waitress handed me a leaflet explaining about the restaurant and Shojin Ryori, the special vegetarian cuisine suiting a particular ethical philosophy and available there. It said that all of the tofu served comes from a very special place North of the city.

Then came a plate with 2 things. A "tofu sushi" which was fried like inari skin on a cube of rice. Then there was a teeny tiny dengaku. Sweet mustardy sauce on a long-ways-cut half eggplant. But here's the catch. The whole eggplant was as long as my thumb and no thicker. Wow. (Later, in Miyazaki, Takeo Watanabe-san explained to me that this kind of tiny eggplant is only available near Kyoto, a specialty.)

Next was tempura. Two finger-sized green peppers; a silky tofu block sitting on a wide nori wrapped up at the corners. It was odd eating this as tempura because it didn't hold its shape. Then there was a spongy-tofu traingle tempura. Last was a thin white sheet deep fried but so light. Maybe a fungus? It was tied into a bowtie kind of thing, like an impressionist butterfly.

Moving along, there was a white bowl with a brown mush-paste looking thing. Turns out that the skin is brown but inside it's got the spongy sweet taste of inari skins. But it's a whole ball of that with vegetable pieces throughout. Wonderful. My favorite (dia-ski = big liking, or love.)

Last (before rice) was a big bowl of hot water with three huge silken tofu blocks. I was told to dip it in soy to which I added shaved green onion, ginger, and something orange and kind of hot--like wasabi hot. Yum!

On my was back to the hotel I actually rode 4 different trains. I'm getting to be pretty good at navigating Kyoto's subway. it's pricey to change trains though. Each hop is $2.

I took this reflection in the canal North of Oike-dori, right next to the Hill of Tara Irish Pub. Outside the pub they had four very large pumpkins (2.5 feet maybe) carved up and glowing. I had seen them the night before, but uncarved.


Posted: Sun - October 31, 2004 at 11:59 PM        

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