A traveling foodie's gastronomic diary from around the world...

Friday, February 4, 2011

Kikunoi Honten (Kyoto, JAPAN) ★★★☆☆

Kikunoi Honten is a restaurant in Kyoto specializing in kaiseki style cooking which often refers to a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner equivalent to the Western haute cuisine.

Heading Kikunoi Honten's kitchen is third generation chef and owner, Yoshihiro Murata, a star in the Kyoto culinary scene. His flagship restaurant in Kyoto was a former tea house almost six decades ago before slowing evolving into a fine dining establishment. Nowadays, the restaurant offers one of the best Japanese culinary experiences available in the city. To add to its amazing history, Kikunoi Honten has been awarded three Michelin stars ever since they launched the first edition in 2010.

Tucked away in a century-old hillside villa, Kikunoi Honten is not the easiest place to find in Kyoto especially for first-timers like us. But after walking through the countless number of temples including the nearby Kodaiji Temple, our persistence finally paid off.

Despite being almost an hour late, our host was patient enough to be still waiting for us at the doorstep.

After greeting us with a warm cup of tea, he led us through a maze of private tatami rooms before finally showing us the way into a spacious private room with a gorgeous garden view.

While we started to settle in, our server presented us with a copy of the restaurant's lunch menu. Good thing that the restaurant only serves a prix-fixe menu. Instead of spending time to go through the menu, we could now turn our attention to this beautiful private room.

Our first course was a spring hassun platter of bite-sized appetizers all made with seasonal ingredients from the Kyoto area. This included ice fish with yuzu, horse reins sushi, etc. which were all beautifully presented.

That was followed up by a bowl of sashimi with red sea bream and blue-fin tuna. They were served with some wild mountain vegetable, carrot and fresh wasabi.

Our third course was a rather unusual soup made with turtle. There was a dumpling with minced meat in the soup along with some daikon and carrot.

Then came our fish course - a grilled white fish with a layer of herbs on top. The fish was quite tender though lacking a little bit of freshness. I thought that piece of confit yuzu on the right actually gave me more pleasant surprises!

Right before our meat course, our server brought us some mini-stoves and lit them right before us. As it turned out, we were having a shabu shabu of wild boar meat, tofu and seasonal vegetables.

It was my first time having Japanese wild boar but surprisingly, it didn't taste much different than regular pork meat.

Our last course before dessert was one of the house specialties, glutinous rice with anago eel, which was served with a miso soup. The eel was very tender and sweet and the texture of the rice was quite similar to our typical Italian risotto (but more sticky).

Dessert was nothing too sophisticated. First up was a strawberry sorbet served in a strawberry soup that was quite refreshing.

Then a more traditional Japanese style dessert arrived in the form of a red bean mochi.

After our two and half hour culinary journey, we went back to the streets of Kyoto for some more site-seeing before heading back to Osaka. Along the way, we had the chance to see many geisha, or traditional Japanese female entertainers walking past us dressed in their traditional kimono.

Kaiseki cuisine is touted as a type of haute cuisine originated from Kyoto. We had great expectation going into this lunch at Kikunoi Honten, which is considered by many as an "institution" when it comes to Kaiseki cuisine. But unfortunately, we didn't find a great deal of surprises which we would normally expect from a 3-star Michelin establishment. That, on its own, was quite disappointing.

Food Rating: 5.5/10

Price: ¥¥¥¥

Address: 459 shimokawara-cho, Yasakatoriimae-sagaru, Shimokawara-dori, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto, Japan
Closest Metro Station: Gion Shijo

Tel: +81 75-561-0015
Website: http://kikunoi.jp/english/store/

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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Hajime (Osaka, JAPAN) ★★★★★

To be honest, we didn't exactly get on the right foot with Restaurant Hajime. We tried to reserve our tables through email but only to learn that they accept reservations by phone exclusively. Okay, so we tried to call long distance...but their booking service was available on selective weekdays only and at very specific hours (I think 1:30pm-3:30pm). We called more than 20-30 times and almost decided to give up. However, our persistence finally paid off and got ourselves a table at last.

Hajime was located in the relatively little known Higobashi district. Tucked away in the corner of an alley next to the Higobashi post office, it looks like yet another contemporary French restaurant rather than a 3-star michelin establishment.

We were warmly greeted by the host and restaurant manager at the door and quickly learned that they have a dress code (jacket and leather shoes). Oops, we were not informed during our reservation but no worries as they were fully prepared already. Got me a nice black jacket and even my size of shoes!

The restaurant was not big and the crowd was very quiet. We quickly ordered the 8-course tasting menu as it was getting a bit late into the afternoon. That was a fantastic decision. All the dishes were very innovative and we especially loved the vegetable dish which was simply a work of art. Perfect presentation and great taste. All in all, we spent 3 hours enjoying this lunch and we enjoyed every moment of it.

When we were about to leave, chef Hajime and his crew were already waiting at the door to greet us with open arms. That was classy.

We've been to quite a few 3-star michelin restaurants around the world and honestly, many of those really did not make an impression on us but this one surely did. The food was sensitional and their service was absolutely flawless. They truly deserve every single star.