Kyoto Izakaya: Eikun Sake Brewery’s Moromine Restaurant

Kyoto’s Eikun sake brewery makes perhaps my favorite Kyoto sake. (Generally, I am not a fan of Kyoto sake.) I was given a tour of the Eikun brewery by the brew master a few years ago and after that always kept my eye out for Eikun sake at restaurants and sake bars. I know several sake aficionados that think highly of Eikun too.

While being given the tour, the brew master told me that Eikun has an izakaya in Fushimi, which is the sake brewing district of Kyoto. I don’t go to Fushimi at dinner time, so I hadn’t had a chance to try it. Last year Eikun opened another Moromine in town, just north of Nishiki Market on Yanaginobanba Street. I had heard good things about it from several fellow foodies and tried to get in a few times but it was always full.

Yesterday, I was in the neighborhood just after 5 pm with my friend and professor from undergrad, Frenchy Lunning and we decided to stop in and see if we could get a table — and we did! Actually, we got there so embarrassingly early there wasn’t anyone else in the restaurant. The restaurant was fully booked for the evening but we promised to eat, drink and run before people with reservations started to arrive.

The food and the sake was very good. We started with some namazake (unpasteurized sake), fresh and fruity and some dried fish that Japanese especially enjoy with beer and sake. We had salmon, stingray ‘fin’ and squid. The pieces are placed on a charcoal brazier at the table for 30 seconds or so. The idea isn’t really to cook them but to warm and soften them up. Good fun and yummy!

We also had a beautiful plate of sashimi which included Kyoto’s famous summer food hamo (pike eel), which was blanched and not raw. Another summer favorite is Kamonasu eggplant, a traditional Kyoto vegetable. We had nasu dengaku (eggplant grilled with sweet miso) and agedashi nasu (eggplant deep fried like the similar tofu dish). The final dish was had was a ‘takikomi gohan‘ rice dish that was made with hamo pike eel. It was all very good!

A very nice meal and very good sake. We didn’t eat and drink all that much and the bill came to just over 10,000 yen. That is reasonable. I had heard that the cost performance on the sake was good, as the restaurant is owned by a brewery. I can’t say that it was overpriced, but I can’t say it was good ‘CP’ either.

I definitely want to go again and explore the menu more fully.