A kaiseki house that tells you what dinner costs before you ask, which at this level is rarer than it should be. What its English page does not tell you is that the number changes on the first of October, in the months it also tells you to book early for.
A frontage of one point eight metres
Yuki Teiichi opened a place called Otaicha dokoro Kitcho in Osaka in 1930. The house records its dimensions, and they are the best single fact in its own history: a frontage of just one point eight metres, running eleven metres back. It was incorporated in 1939. The Arashiyama house came in 1948, in what had been the villa of an antique art dealer, and it is now the headquarters of Kyoto Kitcho. Teiichi's creed, in the house's own translation, was that Japanese cuisine perfected by a hospitable spirit should be praised as a specialty in the world.
Three generations, and the succession ran through a marriage
In 1966 Teiichi's second daughter Junko married Koji Tokuoka, and together they took on the management of Kyoto Arashiyama Kitcho. Their son Tokuoka Kunio became head chef at Arashiyama in 1995 and President and Chief Executive of Kyoto Kitcho in 2009, which makes him the third generation. By 2009 the company was running six restaurants across Japan. Three generations is not four centuries, and the house does not pretend otherwise. It is long enough for one family to have held one house without diluting it, which is the same argument the tea caddy in this issue makes in a different material.
The prices, and the thing the English page leaves out
The English page prints a plain sentence, and printing it at all puts this house in a small minority: the price per person starts at 40,000 yen for lunch and 50,000 for dinner, in both cases plus tax and service charge. That is accurate today. It is not the whole ladder, and the Japanese page carries the rest of it. Through 30 September 2026 the courses run 40,000, 50,000 and 60,000, with an omakase at a market price from 95,000. From 1 October 2026 the 40,000 course comes off and the ladder starts at 50,000, with a further seasonal line from October to February beginning at 98,000. Note where that lands. The same English page recommends booking early for April and for November through January. Every one of those months sits in the higher band. A reader who books for November on the strength of the 40,000 figure will be quoted 50,000 at the least.
And the number you actually pay
The Japanese page also prints the gross, which the English page does not, and the gap is large enough to plan around. The 40,000 course is 52,800 with tax and service. The 50,000 is 66,000. The 60,000 is 79,200. The omakase at 95,000 is 125,400. So the honest way to read the English sentence is that dinner starts at about sixty six thousand yen a head, and that the house is being straight with you in a way most of its peers are not while still quoting the smaller of two true numbers. There is a children's course at 25,000, which is 33,000 gross, and the room takes elementary school age and above.
Hours, and the two pages do not quite agree
The English page gives lunch from 11:30 to 12:30 with the room closing at 15:00, and dinner from 17:00 to 18:30 closing at 21:00. The Japanese page gives 11:30 to 15:00 with last order at 12:30, and 17:00 to 21:30 with last order at 18:30. They agree on the part that governs your booking, which is that you must be seated by 12:30 or by 18:30. They disagree by half an hour on when the room shuts in the evening. Closed every Wednesday, and from 20 to 31 December and 4 to 10 January. The telephone desk answers from 10:00 to 21:30 Japan time, and on Wednesdays only from 10:00 to 14:00, which is the middle of the night in Europe. Cormorant fishing viewings run from July to September. Parking is about five spaces, and the house asks you to come by public transport in April and November because the Arashiyama traffic defeats a car.
At a glance
The TGC view
We book this house, and the reason it is in the letter is the price ladder rather than the cooking, which speaks for itself. A guest who reads the English page and books for November is working from a number that will have lapsed. That gap between what a house publishes in one language and what it publishes in another is precisely the kind of thing worth having someone read before a deposit is placed. Its opposite, Den in Tokyo, publishes no price at all and is in this issue.
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Visit website ↗Marco Müller cooking in Mitte, thirteen inspirations or twelve, and a house that tells you how long the evening is by refusing to seat you after half past seven.
Read the review →Third floor of a former warehouse out past HafenCity. Thomas Imbusch cooks on a single stove standing open in the middle of the room, and the restaurant is named after two temperatures.
Read the review →Zaiyu Hasegawa cooks one menu in an architects' association building in Jingumae and publishes no price for it. There is no booking form. You telephone, between noon and five, and that is the only door.
Read the review →