Akoya Chaya

After visiting the famous Kiyomizu-dera temple in Kyoto, we walked back down the hill along the stone-paved Ninenzaka towards Kodai-ji and stopped for some lunch at Akoya Chaya (阿古屋茶屋).

Chaya means teahouse, but while there was some tea on offer, the main attraction was the unlimited buffet of around 25 different kyo-tsukemono/Kyoto pickled vegetables (京漬物), another of Kyoto's specialities which is served with rice and is a popular souvenir for Japanese from other areas (we tried some in a kyo-tsukemono shop earlier on Ninenzaka). The selection here was almost entirely vegetables; there were a couple of small dried fish things but these were easy enough to spot and avoid!



I think you could order a la carte options, but most of the customers seemed to have got the buffet option (¥1,250). We placed our order with one of the servers, and prompty we were each presented with a tray with miso soup, cold tofu, an empty bowl and an empty plate. The empty plate and bowl were for the unlimited pickles and rice (we got options of white rice, rice porridge and, I think, sweet potato rice). With such a bewildering array of options of pickled vegetables, the only sensible way to go about it really was to take a little bit of everything and try it out, then work out which to go back for more of. The juicy aubergine was probably the best one. To be honest, we weren't quite sure what some of the vegetables were, but most were nice and interesting enough as far as pickled vegetables goes. Pickled vegetables alone as a meal is an odd idea, but the strong taste went nicely with white rice or white rice porridge so it was quite a good value meal together.

This was probably one of the more 'interesting' or 'unsual' meal we made in Japan, since we probably never thought of having a pickled vegetable meal/buffet before. We only came across this restaurant in some Chinese (think Taiwanese) website when doing our pre-trip research. We can't seem to be able find any English websites giving any reviews or information. We certainly didn't see any foreign tourists (or not that we could tell) there; other customers included young adults, families, middle age couples - a variety of clientele. The restaurant was certainly at a great location for East Kyoto temple/shinto sightseeing and a (almost) fool proof Kyoto special vegetarian option (watch out for the fact that it closes at 5pm though!)

阿古屋茶屋 Akoya-chaya
京都府京都市東山区清水3-343
Tel：075-531-0056