Great soba cuisine – not just noodles, an imaginative menu, all at a reasonable price and in the center of Kyoto. Score!
Recently, I have been looking for a good soba restaurant in Kyoto that is new to me — something that offers more than just noodles. I tried several recommendations in Kansai (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe, Nara) from the magazine Amakaratecho (あまから手帳) and was underwhelmed.
A few months back, I popped into Yoshimura for a late soba lunch. I didn’t like the location and the service was so-so, but the menu looked extensive and interesting. Disappointed with the others, I thought I would give Yoshimura a shot for a full dinner and to my delight, I was very impressed! Yoshimura offers just what I was hoping for, an extensive menu of soba cuisine. A lot of the dishes were original and pleasantly surprised me. I think Kyoto is the kind of town where you expect to be surprised with quality and originality. And, Yoshimura delivers!
I am an absolute Peking Duck fiend, so I was very delighted to find this dish on the menu, that while it didn’t sound like Peking Duck, turned out to be a soba and Kyoto themed Peking Duck dish. Amazing. This was my favorite dish of the meal. (Unfortunately I don’t recall the name of the dish and it is not listed on the menu on the Yoshimura soba website. I think it was something to do with crepe. I will check and update this post.) Duck is the traditional ‘red meat’ of Kyoto, very high-end food. This duck is grilled and the skin is not particularly crispy like authentic Peking Duck. Instead of hoisin sweet bean sauce, Yoshimura serves their red miso based soba miso (same as the yaki soba miso dish). Red miso is quite salty so it works nicely as the traditional hoisin sauce would. The ‘pancake’ is a soba flour crepe that also contains cracked soba kernels too. For the veggies, in addition to cucumber and scallion, Yoshimura offers julienned carrots, sliced tomato and sprouts. The sprouts could have been soba sprouts but I don’t think they were, as they are the wrong color. Soba sprouts are purplish. The carrots could have been Kyoto’s kintoki ninjin carrot, but I think it was just regular Western carrot.
The menu was pretty mind-blowing. The only disappointment was one of the desserts. That was soba warabi mochi. While it wasn’t bad, it didn’t surprise as nearly all the other dishes did.
Cost performance: Really good (for Kyoto). We had a lot of food, and really good food. I had a ‘wooden box’ full of sake and two beers. Dinner for two came to less than ¥9,000. (The sake was bad, but few restaurants actually serve good sake.)
About the service. We sat at the counter, right in front of the chefs taking a lot of photos and obviously being really impressed with the dishes. Yet, the chefs didn’t strike up any conversation. While not rude, I think they should have taken some notice of us. Oh, well.
Yoshimura has two other locations, in Arashiyama and near Kiyomizu Temple.
Restaurant name in Japanese: そばの実 よしむら
The restaurant is located on the north side of Gojo-dori Street, just east of Karasuma-dori Street. The closest station Gojo Station, on the Karasuma Subway Line. The Keihan Gojo Station is also within easy walking distance.
Yoshimura has no English language website
