We arrived at Gion Shijo (祇園四条) much earlier than our scheduled time and decided to spend some time checking out this shopping street so we must have walked past this small alley a few times without actually noticing that it would lead to Chihana, our lunch venue this afternoon. Finally, we did find it but not before we've wasted at least 30-45 minutes walking around.
The Kansai region, covering Osaka and the ancient capital of Kyoto, is often referred to as Japan's culinary centre. Since 1946, Chihana has been part of that rich history and is particularly famous with what Japanese calls "Kappo" cuisine (割烹).
Like most of our trips to Japan, we picked the restaurants we wanted to visit well before the trip and then handed over the reservation duties to our hotel concierge. Our booking at Chihana was pretty much done the same way and we were immediately requested to pick the set menu of our choice from one of the 6 sets - ￥10,000 (express lunch), ￥13,000, ￥18,000, ￥25,000, ￥30,000 and ￥35,000 (Details of each set were not given). Since we still have a lot of ground to cover in Kyoto, we didn't want to spend too much time on dining and therefore the express menu was what we've ordered.
Typical Monday and business was a little slow. Including us, there were only 2 parties in the house. The other one was a party of three from Mainland China.
They first started us off with a small bowl of grapefruit and breaded white fish in a citrus dressing.
Followed by a chilled fish and green onion.
More small plates to come, this time with five tiny nibbles including a bowl of soy bean cream, salad in sesame sauce, marinated fish that tasted like sardine, small anchovy with celery and lastly, deep fried sweet potato chips.
At this point, I started to get a little impatient. For one, all of the dishes (or nibbles) so far tasted more or less similar to each other. And apart from that, where's the cooking techniques and mix-and-matching of seasonal ingredients?
Shrimp and vegetable tempura with radish purée and soy sauce. This was served cold which was slightly odd.
A small dish of pork, lotus and broccoli. Tasted like a typical oden but without the daikon, eggs etc etc.
Clear broth with shrimp ball, seaweed and turnip. The shrimp was soft, perhaps a little too soft and the broth has a strong flavor of ginger but not much more.
Sea bream ribbon was next. Very chewy. Did not finish.
Tuna fish and okra with a foamy "yama" sauce. Didn't like the fact that they were serving tuna cold again. The taste was very fishy and we were trying to find out whether it came from the fish itself or from the sauce.
This was one of the few OK dish on this afternoon - spinach, leek, cabbage, mushroom, radish, tofu and baby carrot. A lot of ingredients in the same little bowl. Curiously it was served cold again and not even lukewarm.
Another small nibble came with small fish, pine nuts, green peas, yuzu and pickled arrow-root.
Like all Kaiseki meal, lunch ended with a rice dish. This one had Japanese rice, natural seaweed and cucumber but nothing more. This tasted very earthy and we had the feeling of eating out of the soil from the ground. Didn't finish this one.
Dessert, well, it wasn't really a dessert. It was fresh orange and mandarin juice to wrap up this awful experience (in my opinion). While we were sitting there "enjoying" our juice, we had eye contacts with the other party and from our facial expression, we could tell that both of us were still a bit stunned with the overall experience. How could a Michelin 3-star restaurant fall so flat on its face!?
It was a horror story right from the start (Well, maybe from the second or third dish on, who knows!). Too many dishes with way too similar ingredients and flavors served up one after another. I knew we've picked the cheapest menu out of the bunch but that does not justify the drop in quality!
I think it goes without saying that it's perhaps the worst dining experience from any Michelin 3-star restaurants in the world without question.
Food Rating: 3.5/10
Price: ￥￥￥￥
Address: 584-13-2 Gionmachi Minamigawa, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto 605-0074, Japan
Closest Metro Station: Gion Shijo
Tel: +81 75-561-2741
Website: www.kyotochihana.com
Address: 584-13-2 Gionmachi Minamigawa, Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto 605-0074, Japan
Closest Metro Station: Gion Shijo
Tel: +81 75-561-2741
Website: www.kyotochihana.com
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