Kyoto cuisine for every budget

Robata Sushi Hotaru is a restaurant that some Sharing Kyoto writers frequent. This restaurant serving fresh fish is a teishoku meal set place by day, and an izakaya bar at night. You get a lot for your money at this restaurant: their big portioned teishoku that uses a lot of fish is only 1,000 yen!

My recommendation is this seafood rice bowl! What is on top of it changes depending on the days catch. This rice bowl is topped with seasonal fish like tuna, yellowtail, and bream.

The main dish in this teishoku is steamed yellowtail. 

The restaurant is in a renovated machiya town house, and on the stairs you can see many sake bottles! How about some fish at restaurant Hotaru which has a great atmosphere?

Next, udon of Fumiya! Fumiya is close to Nishiki Market and has been frequented by the locals for a long time. 

All of their gentle-tasting udop noodles can be had for under 1,000 yen! This bowl of kitsune udon is only 560 yen. Cheap!

Yamamoto Menzou is the most famous udon restaurant in Kyoto, and no matter the weather there is always a line in front of it. Great taste, service, and atmosphere are all here, and their udon can be had at prices starting below 1,000 yen. 

The long udon noodles have a shine to them, and are chewy and the texture is a bit al dente. 

Yamamoto Menzou is in Okazaki, where you can also find the sightseeing spots of Heian Shrine, Okazaki Canal, and many museums. You must line up for this famous udon restaurant, but I really hope you will go to this restaurant at least once, maybe when sightseeing around Heian Shrine.

Last for the 1,000 yen gourmet series we have Kushikura! This restaurant belongs to the same company as the famous Katsukura, but this one offers yakitori (skewered chicken). For lunch they offer teishoku meal sets, and after that they are open as an izakaya bar. 

They are known for their chicken dishes, and their famous yakitori rice bowl and karaage fried chicken meal sets can both be had for the cheap price of 1,000 yen! The restaurant is only a 5-minute walk from subway Karasuma Oike Station so access is also good. 

Hyakushokuya offers a limited amount of 100 sukiyaki meals per day. It is really good value to get to eat shabu-shabu for only 1,200 yen. Besides the sukiyaki they also have bite-sized steak meal, but they offer only 20 meals per day. 

This restaurant is often featured in Japanese television programs, and it is very hot right now. It would be really cool to upload a picture of you eating a Japanese wagyu beef shabu shabu in a hot restaurant!

Next, this! Katsukura is a must-visit when talking of gourmet in Kyoto. 

You can have crunchy tonkatsu pork cutlets with fried shrimp for under 2,000 yen. 

Last, in this group we have Tendon Makino in Teramachi Shopping Street. This restaurant specializing in tempura rice bowls, or tendon, opened just in 2016.

There are Makinos in Osaka and Kobe too, but only in Kyoto is there a Makino restaurant specializing in tendon! The huge tendon with luxurious ingredients is BIG! And the price for one bowl is only around 1200 to 1500 yen. Consider a shopping break here when shopping in Teramachi Shopping Street. 

Negiya Heikichi is in Ponto-cho. This restaurant offers sukiyaki, but it is most famous for the generous amount of green onion you get with your sukiyaki. It uses famous Kyoto Kujo green onion, which of course tastes great, but also looks great; remember to post a picture on Instagram! 

You can eat as much as you want of Kujo green onion! They have it on the table. This restaurant can’t be missed by onion lovers, and their a la carte menu is also big, so you can also have a drink here. 

Next, the famous eel restaurant in Gion, Uokeya U. This restaurant is especially popular among tourists from other Asian countries, and the restaurant itself is famous for their eel in a wooden bucket. The grilled eel and the rice that has sucked up all the juices from the eel are really delicious! The eel bucket is 10,000 yen for three people, so it makes around 3,000 yen for one person. 

Remember to also order things from their a la carte menu like dashimaki omelet and grilled liver. It may be a nice way of spending some time to have a drink and some omelet while you wait for your bucket. 

You can know the restaurant from this sign with the hiragana letter "う" on it! This restaurant is close to the alley of Hanamikoji, so when sightseeing in Gion, remember also to enter the alleys! 

Next, how about a drink? Man in the Moon Rokkaku is part of an Irish pub chain you can mainly find around Kyoto. 

The furniture and interior of the bar are all imported from the home of pubs, Great Britain, and the feeling inside the bar is like you had left Kyoto behind and were in a different country. The pub is always lively with people from all over the world, and it is open until 4:00 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays so you can enjoy the beers of the world until early morning.

 

Next, a bar from the genre that is hot in Japan, tachinomi, or a standing bar! Suiba in Shijo Kawaramachi opened two to three years ago, and they offer a new style of standing bar drinking. 

In the bright and fashionable bar you can find people old and young drinking together. And their food is cheap, the dishes in the picture are all 150 yen! You can eat and drink a lot! 

They have many types of good sake. Certain Sharing Kyoto writers also frequent this bar, but even if you drink and eat a lot, the bill is still going to be only around 3,000 to 4,000 yen!

This tempura place in Shinmachi called Tsukitokage offers tempura starting at the incredibly low price of 30 yen. They fry the tempura in front of your eyes, so you can have great tempura for only a few yen. 

This restaurant is in a very Japanese town house. The staff is all very gentle and friendly, so the restaurant feels very welcoming. 

They don’t only offer tempura, but also Kyoto-like dishes like vegetables and oden. There is a lot of variety, and they are all cheap, so you can order a lot and share the dishes with your friends!

The drink-as-much-as-you-want course at Yakiniku Hiro in Kiyamachi can be had from 5,000 yen. The name of this restaurant always pops up when looking for yakiniku restaurants in Kyoto, and it is also popular among visitors from overseas. 

Their restaurant in Kiyamachi is in a renovated house that used to be a restaurant-ryokan and this can be seen in the stone-paved road that leads to the restaurant. I really like the calm atmosphere of it and the way it looks like a fancy ryokan! 

The restaurant faces the Kamo River so in summer you can enjoy their yuka terrace on top of the river.

Next, we have this restaurant serving wagyu beef. But this restaurant is not a yakiniku one; they offer beer offal made in the style of kaiseki cuisine in a “niku kappo” style.

At dinner they only have one course for the price of 6,800 yen. The quality wagyu beef is grilled in front of your eyes. 6,800 yen is quite reasonable since you get to experience all kinds of parts of cow!

Even the location is fashionable; the restaurant is in the alley of Hanamikoji, hidden away from the noise of the city. It is already chic to even know of this restaurant. I’m absolutely sure everyone you take to this restaurant will leave it 100% satisfied. 

Last I have to recommend a kaiseki restaurant to you. But not a famous one, but a little known secret among the writers of Sharing Kyoto! This cozy kaiseki restaurant, Masaki, is a 10-minute walk away from Nijo Castle. 

The warm and friendly owner-chef has worked at such famous restaurants as Kodaiji-Wakuden and Mizuki at The Ritz-Carlton Kyoto. The dishes and ingredients are all chosen by the owner-chef, and the portions are big. This is a picture from the 10,000 yen course, and all the dishes were really good. If you get bored with the teishoku meal set style of washoku, I hope you will try the Japanese food of Masaki.