I introduced this place the year before last, I think. It’s famous for Kyoto’s local cuisine, yet oddly it hardly shows up in guidebooks. Last time an SD card problem wiped out a whole bunch of my photos, which left me deflated, so this time I made a point of going back. There’s a main shop and a branch, and apparently they only share the name; the owners are completely different. Both have the same menu, but one of them was a bit unfriendly and cramped. So I moved over to the main shop, where the seating was roomy and I could sit for a long while and even plan the next leg of my trip. The main shop is just before you cross from Maruyama Park over to Chion-in, so I hope you find it without trouble.
Imobo set meal + extra tororo maki
I remember it being 2,650 yen. It’s definitely not cheap. So I can’t exactly rave about it, but the taste is worth something in its own way.
Kyoto’s local specialty of simmered taro, imobo
The taro is simmered until soft. Some people might say, “All this money for just that?” Local cuisine or not, Kyoto isn’t a region that produces anything all that spectacular, so it’s hard to expect dishes built on special ingredients. That’s probably why the most famous things in Kyoto are tofu dishes and shojin ryori (Buddhist vegetarian cuisine). But for me, this was a dish that let me feel the refined, graceful sensibility unique to this region.
Suimono (clear soup)
Clean and nothing lacking.
Rice
Yakko wasabi
A dish of tofu topped with wasabi.
Tororo maki
The only difference from the basic set is this tororo maki, and it was worth adding. Tororo is grated yam: mild in flavor, cold, and a little sticky. Wrapped in fragrant nori, it becomes quite a treat.
It was my second visit, but I was just as satisfied as the first time. Eating quietly in a tatami room, I thought to myself how glad I was to have come to Kyoto. If only the weather had been a bit clearer, I couldn’t have asked for more, but there are people who couldn’t travel at all over the holidays and just stayed home, so I shouldn’t complain about that. Case in point, this week I can’t go anywhere either and I’m stuck working at the office.