Touzan

Description:

• Next door to Sanjusangendo and across the street from Kyoto National Museum, this eatery is convenient to sight-seeing but worth going out of your way for. Modeled after a Kyoto-style home, with views of a traditional rock garden and with an innovative interior design (such as glass room dividers encasing broken pottery and a wall with textured Japanese paper imprinted with pebbles, a manhole, a squashed can, and other items when the paper was pressed against a street), it specializes in charcoal-grilled vegetables and sushi. Seating is at a sushi counter or at tables overlooking the garden, but you can order sumibiyaki (vegetables, fish, and meat grilled over high-quality charcoal), Kyo-kaiseki, or sushi from a seasonal menu regardless of where you sit. The highest-priced dishes are for Japanese beef, while the Shokado Bento, with appetizer, seasonal dishes like simmered prawn and lotus root, grilled eggplant, sashimi, butterfish, rice, miso soup, and pumpkin pudding is a great value at ¥4,300 ($36/£18). A large selection of sake serves as a perfect complement to the meals, but if you have trouble choosing, the sake-tasting set for ¥2,500 ($21/£11) lets you sample four varieties.

• © Frommer's 2012