Eating well in Kyoto (no photos)


I think this is going to be my first trip to Japan where I don't lose weight

For lunch, after I dissed the recommended Biotei and the woman from Tosai walked me 3 blocks in wooden sandals up to Kosendo-sumi, I resolved that I'd come back to Tosai for dinner and did. When I got there the palce was almost full, and I got a seat at a low table, right next to the kitchen and the cash register. Three waitresses attended to everything, and got me settled. The owner I had met earlier saw me, gestured toward me, and told the waitresses in slow distinct English, "We. Are. Friends." Big smiles all around.

So many things on the menu looked good, I chose the vegetarian set menu: 30,000Y. If this will bore you, dear reader, please move on. I'm going to describe what I ate, it was soooo good.

It started with silky tofu with a tiny bubble of "water shield" sprouts of some kind.

Then came deep fried burdock root chips (fried gobo! again!) on top of baby vegetables cooked in a kudzu starch sauce--enoki mushrooms, baby green beans, little yellow cherry tomatos, and tiny red peppers.

Next was milky yuba (tofu skins) sashimi. There were dainty piles of super-strong wasabi and grated ginger on teeny tiny thin slices of cucumber, about 1/2" across. With a thin lime slice resting agains one pile of yuba, the everything sat on two shiso leaves. There was also a white, crunchy mountain potato which has a consistency closer to apple, and some thinly sliced white vegetable with red skins that tasted like parsley. Above the items on the dish was a twig of tiny red currants (?) with no leaves.

After that was a dish called "Ken-Chin." Deep fried rolled yuba around vegetables. Two pieces cut diagonally which had once been one long eggroll like thing. Each piece had a little yuba "tie" making a belt but also fried and edible.

More tofu. Tofu cubes in a light orange starchy sauce with green onion bits, kind of hot and spicy.

Then comes a white clay urn, a rounded square in shape, with a foil-wrapped metal lid and holes in the sides. She lights the inside on fire. On another plate comes a large brown leaf (like 10") topped by miso paste and mushooms making a chunky mush. I think it was called "hoba." Maybe that's just the leaf. She puts the leaf onto the burner and comes by every 3 or 4 minutes to push it around once it starts sizzling in front of me. As I watched it cook, she brought a bowl of "maron rice" which is rice with several starchy "nuts" in it. I was instructed to eat the miso much with the rice. Wow. It was pasty in texture, like a thick sauce, and had a complex, earthy taste. It certainly needed the rice to cut its strength.

Let's just say I'm tempted to go back tonight. During dinner, I was reading the book I brought, In Search of Elvis Presley's Jewish Roots: Schmelvis. I could barely contain myself from laughing out loud as I read. I was seated at a big square table with 7 other people, so I kept my manners and laughed silently, turning red a few times.

After dinner, I went to a little Italian cafe on Sanjo-dori, West of the Tully's and a few other European-style cafes. It was raining pretty hard when I came out, but I managed to find the Irish pub called "The Hill of Tara" surprisingly close to my hotel. It seemed that the only other non-Japanese in there was the bartender. I sat at the bar with a perfectly poured Guiness and and finished Schmelvis.

Posted: Sun - October 31, 2004 at 10:09 AM        

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