Copenhagen in Three Days
Three lunches and three dinners, all verified as operating, in the city that takes lunch as seriously as dinner.
The world's tables, verified.
Five counter seats, from 1885 tempura to the morning kissaten, in the city that does counters best.
Kyoto's dining rooms hide their best seats in plain sight. The counter is the city's great equalizer: the room where the kaiseki tradition, the tempura craft, and the morning coffee all happen at arm's length from the person making them. First-timers chase reservations. The wise chase counters.
Five counters for a first visit, all operating, all documented. Book what you can, walk into what you cannot, and sit where you can watch the work.
A note on planning. These are small rooms: Gion Nishikawa seats 11, and Tempura Endo Yasaka's counter seats 14. Book well ahead where booking is possible. The morning kissaten needs no reservation at all: Inoda Coffee's main shop opens daily at 7:00. Build the day around that split, the planned dinners and the spontaneous mornings, and Kyoto stops being intimidating.
Tempura Endo Yasaka at 566 Komatsu-cho, Higashiyama-ku, has been frying since 1885. The official site lists Japanese-style counter seats and tatami counter seats, with the counter option seating up to 14. Tempura is theater at the counter: the batter, the oil, the salt, all of it inches away. This is where to learn what the craft looks like up close.
Gion Nishikawa at 473 Shimogawaracho in Higashiyama is the quintessential kaiseki counter: 11 seats in Gion, and multiple travel guides list the room at two Michelin stars. Small, precise, and the definitive first-timer's introduction to the form.
Kyo Kaiseki Kichisen at 5 Shimogamo Morimotocho, Sakyo-ku, serves traditional Kyoto kaiseki following tea-kaiseki traditions, set in the Tadasu-no-Mori forest near Shimogamo Shrine. The setting is half the meal: ancient trees outside, then the quiet room.
Honke Tankuma Honten at 168 Izumiyacho, Shimogyo-ku, is a Kyoto kaiseki house founded in 1928, born as a counter kappo restaurant. Nearly a century of counter cooking, and the room that proves the form is not a fashion but a lineage. If the trip allows one splurge beyond Gion, make it this one.
Do it in this order. Start the morning at Inoda Coffee when the doors open at 7:00, take lunch where the day allows, and save the kaiseki counter for dinner, when the room is at its most deliberate. Kyoto rewards the early riser and the patient booker in equal measure.
Inoda Coffee Main Shop at 140 Doyucho, Nakagyo-ku, is the Kyoto kissaten established in 1940, open daily from 7:00 to 18:00. Start the day here: the old coffee house, the thick toast, the city waking up around you. The morning counter is Kyoto's most democratic seat, and it costs less than any dinner on this list. The house has been doing the same thing since 1940, which in Kyoto counts as young.
Five counters, one city, and the closest seat to the craft. In Kyoto, the counter is not the cheap seat. It is the best one. Sit down, watch the hands, and let the city do what it has done for centuries: feed you at arm's length, and make it look effortless.
Filed from the Guides desk.
Three lunches and three dinners, all verified as operating, in the city that takes lunch as seriously as dinner.
Five operating rooms that show what this port city eats when no one is watching.
Five rooms, from the 1872 bouchon to the Japanese chef rewriting the menu, in France's gastronomic capital.
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