Search ResultsAfter yesterday's visit to the spectacular Yoshiminedera Temple in south-western Kyoto, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant we happened across on the way to the next temple. It seemed like an average lunch cafe, but it had a shocking surprise in store for us. 昨日の昼ご飯は京都市西京区の「茶房か寿が」で食べました。 ポールさんの注文は「マグロとアボカド丼定食」を大盛りにしましたが、びっくりほど大きいマンガ盛りマグロが多かった。本当に8〜10倍位見込みより多かった。1200円だけでめっちゃメッチャ良かったです。マグロはハイークオリティーでした。 Paul ordered the "tuna sashimi (raw tuna slices) and avocado over rice" lunch. At just 1,200 yen (about US$10.50) one doesn't expect much fish, so he ordered the large. What he got was a shockingly large amount of fish... 8 to 10 times the amount expected. At first this brought to mind the [...] View full post » We recently had a very nice family dinner at the Kiev Russian Restaurant (レストランキエフ) in Kyoto's Gion district. I'd never had Russian cuisine and so didn't really know what to expect, but it was fantastic. It was a good place to make a first impression of Russian food because the highest quality was evident in every aspect of the meal... from the obviously superb raw ingredients down to the presentation. At Kiev I had the spring seasonal course dinner "Besner"... course after course of absolutely delightful foods of, again, the highest quality. I couldn't get enough. I only had my [...] View full post » In my previous post about the carpet of yellow at the Iwato Ochiba Shrine in the mountains of north-west Kyoto, I mentioned that my inspiration for venturing out to see the shrine was a blog post by Britto about his bicycle ride there. He also mentions stopping for a bite to eat at the middle-of-nowhere restaurant Yama no Ie Hasegawa (山の家 はせがわ -- "Mountain House Hasegawa", with "Hasegawa" being the family name of the proprietor). As it so happened, on my trip out to the shrine, Paul and I were getting hungry about the time we came upon the restaurant's sign, [...] View full post » As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we took Fumie's folks out for their 35th wedding anniversary, to Moritaya (モリタ屋) for sukiyaki. Sukiyaki involves cooking fresh veggies and meat right at the table, with a bit of sauce and water. One specialty to the Kyoto style is to sprinkle a bit of special sugar (some kind of large-grain coarse white sugar) into the pan, which both adds a bit of sweetness and prevents the meat from burning. View full post » My most recent two posts, "Three Blades of Grass, and Friends" and "Table with a View", are about a restaurant we visited on Saturday, Toganojaya (とが乃茶屋), in the Takao area in the mountains of north-west Kyoto. Seeing me take the shot above, the proprietor kindly opened up the big parasol (the red cone-looking thing to the right of center), and I tried to get a shot with it... These bamboo-and-cloth parasols are not uncommon, but they're difficult to photograph well because digital cameras can't handle their deep color, especially with the huge dynamic range of bright sunlight and dark shadows. [...] View full post » |