Kaiseki Dinner

For Igor's birthday, we went to a lovely two-star Michelin kaiseki dinner at Gion Matayoshi.

Kaiseki is a traditional Japanese multi-course meal focused on seasonal ingredients, and it’s a specialty of the Kyoto area.

We had our own private room upstairs, which we reached after removing our shoes at the door. Our dinner started with each of us choosing a sake pairing, which was then described to us in Japanese—not sure what was said, but all of the pours were delicious.

The meal featured a variety of fish in different forms—shrimp wrapped around an egg yolk, sashimi, and octopus they showed us live before cooking!

Everyone was so kind and explained the meal with detailed ingredient textbooks full of pictures, and even taught us the proper way to eat certain dishes. The only mishap was when Igor tried to order a bottle of sake and we almost ended up with the magnum version—1,500 mL!

We ended the meal with some lovely desserts and really enjoyed the 20-minute walk home to help us digest.Read more