Places we stopped along the way

Kyogoku Kaneyo

From: Making New Year's Eve soba in a Kyoto townhouse

Eel and rice beneath the omelet

An eel restaurant said to date from the Meiji era (some say the Taisho era), in a wooden building that keeps the look of its early days. Its signature kinshi-don is an eel bowl topped with a large Kyoto-style dashi omelet; the omelet is said to have been devised to keep the eel warm in winter. This time I also had umaki and a non-alcoholic beer.

456 Matsugaecho, Rokkaku-dori Shinkyogoku Higashi-iru, Nakagyo-ku, Kyoto

Sources: restaurant.ikyu.com mapple.net intojapanwaraku.com

This moment in the journey

Kinshi-don at Kyogoku Kaneyo

For lunch I went to Kyogoku Kaneyo, a long-established eel restaurant near Shinkyogoku. It is said to date from the Meiji era and to keep the look it had in the early Taisho years. Big bamboo baskets and lantern-like lamps hung from the high ceiling, and through a gap in the shoji, smoke rose from eel grilling over charcoal.

First, umaki. In Kansai, umaki is eel rolled in a fluffy omelet rich with dashi. I poured a non-alcoholic beer into a glass printed with the name Kaneyo and waited for what I had come for: kinshi-don, the signature dish, said to be ordered twice as often as the regular eel bowl.

Under the lid, a Kyoto-style dashi omelet covered the whole bowl. Lifting it with my chopsticks, I found rice soaked in sauce and eel grilled to a fragrant char. Eating the dashi-rich egg and the sweet, savory eel together, there was only one word for it: koufuku, a blessing for the mouth. Kyoto, I love it here.

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