Piping hot winter foods ease the cold in Kyoto

Hyoto Kyoto is located in the Shijo Karasuma area of Kyoto, and the friendly hostess of the restaurant welcomes you right away when you enter the restaurant. The tatami mats of the restaurant and the traditional Kyoto music of it all feel very elegant. They offer A5-grade Omi beef that just melts in your mouth. Indeed a very luxurious experience!

Before having the shabu shabu, you get to taste a very beautiful hassun platter. This platter is full of Kyoto traditions, and the ingredients are all seasonal. After eating the shabu shabu, you even get udon noodles, so I’m sure you’ll all feel full after eating here, and won’t have to worry about the cold anymore.

This restaurant started out as a meat shop, but now it’s also one of the most famous Japanese BBQ places in Kyoto. Because the restaurant is run by a meat shop, you get to taste cuts that you wouldn’t normally see at a BBQ restaurant. Just watching the glowing red charcoal slowly grill the meat on the grill is enough to make one feel warm.

Because you can choose from so many different types of beef cuts, it’s hard to decide from where to start, so getting a set meal might be a good option. This is also one of the restaurant’s most popular menu items. I really like the one with green onion inside it, the taste is a lasting memory for me. The restaurant is in a building that used to be an inn, so it has a very traditional feel to it. So let’s enjoy some beef BBQ!

Toriyasa is a hot pot restaurant by the Kamo River offering chicken hot pot. Their hot pot is called mizutaki, and it is a thick chicken based one, in which you have pieces of chicken, Chinese cabbage, mushrooms, and other vegetables. The chicken is very soft and juicy, and the soup has a salty sweetness to it, and there’s nothing to complain about!

But before having the soup, please consider having some of their fried chicken. The juiciness of the chicken and the crispiness of the skin are exceptional. And the soup you drink after this is said to be good for your skin, so especially women should take care to drink at least one bowl of it!

Fumiya is famous for their udon noodle hot pot, and because it’s located close to Nishiki Market it’s also very popular among foreign visitors to Kyoto. The bubbling hot pot is piping hot and makes you forget all about the cold. The noodles are chewy and there are a lot of them, and you also have mocha rice cakes and vegetables in the hot pot, and the price is very cheap at 670 yen. Not to forget that the staff is exceptionally friendly!

When it comes to udon noodles, you should also consider their udon noodles with tofu skin. The tofu skin sucks up the salty taste of the soup, and the soup, in turn, gets a bit of sweetness from the tofu skin. This makes the taste even better, and the noodle bowl is a surprisingly harmonious taste-experience. These udon noodles are not only hot but cheap, so they’re perfect for winter.