Travel Guide to Kansai, Japan Is the food in Kansai delicious?

Foreword:

Japanese material is a capital IP! It is the "catering model" in the circle of urban white-collar friends, it is unlimited self-service, it is sashimi roses, it is the "Japanese drama aunt"'s one-person "Late Night Diner" that is obscene, it is the Japanese life piled up by the so-called simple consumerism, and it is the outline of class , is the ticket to the pseudo-middle class. It’s the dried fish that our parents remember, the seaweed soup that doesn’t taste full and fishy, ??it’s the battle between the two generations’ food concepts!

This is a good opportunity. We went to Kansai to taste some authentic flavors and ingredients and make some records. After staying for almost ten days, the troops were divided into two groups, Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe, and ate at dozens of restaurants. Among them, there are 4 Michelin restaurants, which were reserved several months ago. In Arashiyama, Kyoto, Mr. Sankin waited in line for nearly 3 hours to eat the best eel rice in Kansai! Throughout the journey, there were also some good-looking items, surprising ones, and even some random restaurants! What an unexpected surprise.

This time I will introduce 8 restaurants, which can basically be used as a food foraging guide when you travel to Kansai. There will also be some very practical tips about reservations and prices. In short, do your homework in advance.

Hyotei—Japanese-style breakfast with three Michelin stars

@毛direct

Hyotei in Kyoto is located near Nanzenji Temple, although it is not as well-known as Ju Noi He Ryugin is an out-and-out famous restaurant, with a history of 400 years and three Michelin stars. In addition to Kyoto cuisine and tea kaiseki, Hyotei’s breakfast porridge has always been its specialty! Every summer, an endless stream of diners come to this alley in Keage in the cool morning to visit Hyotei, taste the morning porridge, and "Hyotei Tamago" which has been listed as a famous product since the Bakumatsu period

"Hyotei Tamago" is a half-cooked chicken egg, commonly known as a hot spring egg. It is the core of the Hyotei morning meal set. It will be served first with three-flavor side dishes, a clear soup and two pieces of sushi.

The side dishes are cooked plums, cooked fish and some seasonal vegetables and squid salad. The fish is seasoned with grapefruit, which is refreshing and sweet, and combined with the slight acidity of the plum, it is basically appetizing.

Then enjoy the half-cooked eggs, which have been cut. The yolk seems to be coagulated but not solid, and seems to be cooked but not cooked. The egg core is wonderfully seasoned and has a light salty taste, as is the egg white. The heat is well controlled and the taste is good. Closer to "soup" in time, this chaotic experience is extremely refreshing.

After completing the above, the waiter served the porridge, which was ordinary white porridge with a few green onions on top. When eating, the special soup on the side was poured into the porridge and mixed with food. The porridge is well cooked, the rice grains are full, thick but not rotten, and the soup is thickened. I thought it was eaten as a side dish, rather than used as a pure sauce to season the porridge. There is some on the side The pickles served with porridge are very refreshing. After finishing the set meal, I was 90% full. It took nearly an hour. After finishing the meal, I felt so refreshed that I walked to Kiyomizudera Temple!

A set of morning meals costs 4,700 yen per person, and reservations must be made in advance. It should be noted that Hyotei does not accept direct reservations from foreign tourists, and reservations must be made through the hotel. Some hotels will require a credit card guarantee.

Yoshiquan - Kyoto-Kaiseki banquet with the theme of "orange"

@马direct

Yoshiquan, traditional Kyoto-Kaiseki cuisine. The location is near Shimogamo Shrine, along the road in front of Kyoto City Hall. Just go straight north.

The reservation is for six people. The restaurant has arranged the largest private dining room. The minimum price for a set meal is 14,000 yen per person. An additional 15% service charge and 8% tax are required. In terms of desserts and fruits, there are a total of 13 dishes, which are served in order of the banquet. The meal time is about 4 hours, divided into two parts, with a half-hour rest in between.

The banquet starts with a glass of Japanese sake and ends with a bowl of matcha.

During the banquet was the "Yamato Edible Crafts Exhibition" decorated with various exquisite utensils. Some of the ingredients were my first taste, and some of the dishes were really unfamiliar, such as the second half of the rice bowl, which was made with thick soup. The sauce is cooked with seaweed, and topped with fresh fish roe, which is sticky. Even though I have tried my best, I still can't understand the taste philosophy of this dish. (laughing)

This meal is so expensive. Apart from the dazzling array of dishes and the well-paced service, the food that night focused on "sweet orange", which was used as an embellishment in the front, middle and back of the banquet. , is also very exciting. After sitting down and choosing a drink, the waiter strongly recommended the freshly squeezed orange juice in the store to the female guest, and emphasized that today we got very good sweet oranges. It is true that the squeezed juice was only served slowly when the first course was almost finished. I just caught up. Participate in the end of the appetizer. When the fourth sashimi comes on, the orange continues to play its role. The sashimi that day was tuna toro (belly), served with a dozen fresh oranges cut into thin slices. The waiter asked for a thin slice of orange, sandwiched between two slices of toro, and then put it on top of the piece of fish and smeared mustard on it to complete a mini The "sashimi sandwich" was then ordered to be served in one go. The fat of the tuna belly splashed in the mouth instantly, along with the juicy and almost melting orange meat, which was sweet and dense.

At the end, the waiter brought out a lovely and colorful dessert, a sweet orange, the inside of which was almost hollowed out, and there was indeed a crystal clear orange pudding inside! Such echoes from beginning to end, with great care!

After finishing the Japanese confectionery and matcha, the banquet has just ended, and I am already 11 minutes full. I strongly recommend that you try to have a simple lunch before the Kaiseki dinner.

When I was picking my teeth and paying the bill, I found a sign hanging in the middle of the box, which read: "Bai Gui can still be polished"...

Guangchuan - Conger eel rice with one Michelin star

@Sankin

It is said to be the best eel rice dish in Kansai and the third in Japan, but I couldn’t reserve a place a month in advance. Since I have a soft spot for eel rice, when I went to Arashiyama, I turned to Hirokawa to try my luck. It turned out that those who had not successfully booked could queue up to enter. Although the queue was so long that it broke down. After asking for about 3 hours, my colleagues all planned to give up. I had to queue alone while they went shopping nearby to eat and then we met again at about the same time. 70% of the team is Chinese-speaking. The ghost guys retreated one after another when they saw the current situation. They were indeed more rational.

The environment is quite good, and the flower arrangements on the walls and corridors are very high-end. The set meals are 5,000 and 7,000 and can also be ordered a la carte. Basically, the waiting time for the meal is eliminated. Generally, formal dining only takes about 15 minutes, but I think the 2 hours of waiting for this dish is still quite worth it.

The eel is grilled in sauce. The eel skin used here is thinner than that in China. The grilling temperature is very good, and the taste is between plump and burnt. The super large portion not only has more rice, but also has two layers of eel, and the amount is enough to be sincere; after the large pieces are hearty, smash some of the eel into pieces and mix it with the rice, mix it and put it in your mouth. The aroma of rice and eel are mixed together, which is wonderful.

It is impossible to eat eel sashimi in China. The slices are very thin. The white meat texture is crispy and slightly fishy after chewing. The specially prepared yellow mustard complements the taste. It is worth a try. ;Now that I think about it, I should have ordered a few more eel sashimi, and I don’t know when I could have this flavor again in the future. Of course, I didn’t consider whether my belly could hold it, and the way I ate it was not elegant enough. Also, if you are not allergic to slightly fishy or offal food, the grilled eel liver is absolutely delicious.

Tips: There are Chinese waiters, you can queue up without making a reservation, and the queue basically ends at 13:00

Mouriya, our main store - A5 grade Kobe Wagyu

@Sankin

In fact, the only purpose of setting up the Kobe stop on this trip to Kansai is to enjoy an A5 Wagyu Teppanyaki in a serious way. Because there is no beef import agreement between Japan and China, there is naturally no legal way to eat Japanese wagyu in the country; those smuggled meats with shocking prices, frozen multiple times and tricky in terms of grade make it not so pleasant to consume.

Kobe is a small city. When JR came out, he followed Google Maps and found the restaurant (spelled in English as kobe steak restaurant mouriya); this famous restaurant requires reservation in advance. After ordering two top-level set meals, Start waiting. The waiter served the meat in advance, with clear texture and transparent marble pattern;

After communicating about the degree of doneness, the chef began to cut the beef skillfully and cut it in advance according to different positions; salt was placed in front of him , pepper, mustard and dipping sauce, I tried the dipping sauces for the first round of beef one by one. The meat was so soft in the mouth that it could be said to "melt" in the mouth, and then the overflowing meaty aroma surged in, defeating all the previous ones in terms of taste. Steak experience.

The chef continues to grill other parts on the iron plate, and then tells you the clear parts and characteristics when serving them to the plate; you then experience the softest and juiciest part, which is excellent every time A feast for the palate, great with red wine (the red wine in the store was served very quickly, but it was already awake). The edges and fat are cut into small pieces, grilled repeatedly on the iron plate and finally served with bean sprouts. The aroma of butter blends into the vegetarian dishes, and the fat is taken away by the high temperature. The Wagyu butter residue is charred and crispy, and it's perfect with rice. It is indeed temporarily capped in the beef category and is unmatched.

Tips: Reservations are required, children can be accommodated, and taxi services are available

Shimizu Shunmasa's house - Soup Tofu Banquet next to Kiyomizu Temple

@Mo Directly

Kiyomizu-dera Temple is famous for its tofu, which is filled with mist and a sense of Zen. However, any legendary tourist destination cannot escape the embarrassment of a "commercial utopia". I thought that the tofu of the famous temples in Kyoto should be kept in a shelf, but I didn't know that they were all over the streets.

In advance, I found a popular shop called Shimizu Junmasa Okabe house, which is spelled in English as Shimizu JunTadashi Okabe house. It is on the main commercial street leading to Qingshui Temple. It has a soup tofu feast for one person. It sells for 3,600 yen and has a wide variety of items. The main dish is a pot of "bland" soup tofu with just soy sauce. There are various tofu products around, including cold salad, charcoal grilling, tempura and some If you finish the whole set of side dishes, you will be almost 80% full!

Japanese soup tofu is slightly tenderer than our old tofu and has a strong ability to absorb soup juice.

They also have another way of eating it, which is to bring a pot of soy milk and cook it over water. When a layer of bean rind forms on the surface of the soy milk, you can pick it out and eat it with a special sauce. It is also considered a specialty of Kyoto. There is a shop specializing in tofu skin near Arashiyama. The finished product is very chewy and delicious.

In general, there are a lot of yudofu shops in Kyoto, and I believe the quality of them is pretty much the same.

Sankyutei - the top 100 sukiyaki in Japan

@Sankin

When I walked to the door of this restaurant, I was greeted by an older waiter He stopped us and told us clearly in English, "No reservation, no food." After checking the reservation information, we went up to the second floor and waited for a while in the Waiting Room before we arranged a private room. From the interior of the restaurant, the etiquette of the waiters, and the unit price, I felt that this was a restaurant that was worthy of Michelin (and it turned out to be the case.)

Wagyu set meal for 7,000 yen, a large plate of thinly sliced ??Wagyu beef And a vegetarian dish, a young girl served the whole process, her gestures were neat and elegant, and her words were appropriate, making people feel relaxed and elegant;

Heat the pan with butter, sprinkle with sugar and soy sauce, put the beef on The iron plate can be eaten after flipping it a few times. It is dipped in fresh egg liquid and the mouth is soft and fragrant. The second round of tofu, vermicelli, cabbage, and onions are cooked together with the gravy. The rich taste is also useless. The strong "sweetness" of Hiyaki is great. After two or three cycles, it is really delicious with a bowl of good rice.

Tips: Reservation required

Immen-an - Japanese curry rice that heals office workers

@毛direct

Osaka Heart Saibashi is the place with the largest number of Chinese people in Kansai. The main shopping street is full of drugstores and electrical appliance stores that serve Chinese people. Unexpectedly, the merchants have also introduced "famous items" such as crayfish and hot dog buns to cater to mainland tourists. There is a long dragon and a wide range of local accents. Wandering on both sides of the main street, I accidentally stumbled into a curry rice restaurant called Imengan.

The restaurant only has a bar counter, which can accommodate at most a dozen people. It is the lunch market, and office workers are lining up outside. When it was my turn, I explained that I was a foreigner, and the boss immediately handed me an English menu. It was not enough, and he accompanied me to the door to read the pictures and explain the order. It was the busiest time, so he greeted the guests in this way, and he was dedicated.

I ordered the famous specialty of the restaurant, the popular chicken cutlet curry rice and the classic omelette rice. I really don’t know what to say about curry. After eating it, I felt that similar restaurants in Shanghai can be ignored. Most domestic Japanese curries are made with semi-finished sauces, which are sweet and weak, and you look like you are smiling the whole time. The food here is not exciting when you first eat it. You have to try it in C major, and the rice is at the right temperature, so you relax, randomly turn on the "war song mode", and devour it hungrily. Not long after, smoke started coming from your forehead, and you suddenly realized that the plate was empty. Seeing that you were satisfied with your meal, the boss proudly bowed deeply to you.

Japanese curry is the totem of modern Japanese diet and a lovely meal for ordinary people. In front of the delicious curry, office workers take off their suits and ties, relax their usual "hard work" like clockwork, and liberate themselves from the fatigue of social beings.

Omen - cold noodle udon, a good shop

@Sankin

After leaving Ginkakuji Temple, we have already skipped lunch. I believed that no one in Kyoto would pay, so I found OMEN through reviews. It was about a 10-minute walk from the Ginkakuji exit. Even though I had passed the meal, the store was still very busy, and most of them were locals. It specializes in udon, tempura and mackerel sushi. Looking back on the entire trip to Kansai, this casual shop gave me the biggest surprise.

I ordered the tempura udon set meal and the seasonal set meal. The serving speed was a little slow, because it is a small restaurant with light meals, and the waiters were also quite diligent and hurried; the udon noodles were the absolute highlight. There are hot and cold options to choose from. The noodles are chewy in the mouth and have a rich wheat aroma. They are served with a variety of side dishes, sauces and sesame seeds mixed into the noodles. It is really great and brings absolute refreshment in Kyoto in the summer.

The tempura ingredients are freshly fried to perfection. Although there is no wok gas that is emphasized in specialty stores, the fresh ingredients, just the right batter and crunchy texture are among the top quality tempuras.

The fish sushi that followed was even more amazing. The mackerel (vinegar mackerel) was absolutely plump and the size of the sushi was larger than average. The vinegar rice was mixed well; the fish oil seeped out between the teeth after one bite. Vinegar rice, sandwiched with the unique fishy smell of mackerel, leaves only a sense of satisfaction.

Tips: There is an English menu, and the udon is hot and cold. Both are excellent

Additional travel warning:

Kuromon Market - full of streets Chinese free-range market for tourists

@Sankin

I originally had high expectations to get close to the Japanese market and find the greatest pleasure in the down-to-earth food; then, when I walked into the market, the Chinese language on the street was like It gave me an ominous premonition that it turned out to be really uninteresting. The market is actually not big, and things are quite homogeneous. Most of them are snacks and you can't sit down to eat them. If you want to try a variety and not stick to the environment, you can try it, but don't be fooled by the kitchens of Osaka people. confuse.

For things that cost around 1,000 yuan, even if you leave out service and good restaurants, there is not much price difference. The price of Kobe beef is not low, and the meat is also good. It can be processed with the imprecision of an electric iron plate, and it is simply an overpriced product. The sea urchin is very powerful, but the price is not competitive. The oden is delicious, but the excessive saltiness makes me almost die. Bad; the sushi stalls specialize in sashimi and seafood, but the vinegar rice is not up to standard. The soy milk costing 300 yuan was quite mellow. I drank three cans in a row. After thinking about it carefully, it turned out to be a sky-high price for soy milk. I had unknowingly taken advantage of the exchange rate.

It costs more than 20,000 yuan to fully feed two adults and one child. It is not cheap at all, and it is not aesthetically pleasing to eat along the way. Most of these places are Chinese tourists and Korean girls, so there is no big reason not to go.

Tips: Many stalls close at 17:00