’Do It Yourself’ Azuki and Monaka 京べに

Happy Birthday Dear Miwa
It was Miwa‘s birthday the other day and one of her co-workers gave her this interesting Kyoto wagashi called Kyo beni, literally Kyoto lipstick. I got to try some and here is what I thought:

At first sight I was like; Huh, Tsuruya Yoshinobu makes canned sweets now? What is the world coming to? The packaging is very un-shinise.

Kyobeni: Monaka Wafer and Ogura Anko – Package

Tokyo vs. Kyoto
While novel and modern, Kyobeni is not weird or nouveau. Being nouveau for the sake of being nouveau is what Tokyo is all about and that is completely un-Kyoto.

D.I.Y. is not a tradition in Kyoto. Ideally, everything is done by someone whose specialty, whose purpose to exist, is to do that task. And equally ideally, you have a specialty so that you can afford to always pay or hire a specialist for what you want to need. For example, a metal smith that only makes handcrafted finger catches for sliding fusuma screens. You don’t just drop by Home Depot to pick up a Made in China finger catch. You hire a specialist craftsman to make one just for that screen, just for that room in the house.

Well, those days have largely past and in the last decade 100, now 99 Yen Shops, discount outlets and ‘do it yourself’ inspired home centers have sprung up all over Japan. Even in the suburbs of old Kyoto there are a few now. (Even this Kyoto foodie gets his favorite Japanese junk food at the 99 Yen Shop.)

Kyobeni: Monaka Wafer and Ogura Anko

Kyobeni: Do It Yourself – Spreading Anko

The Vexing Problem of Soggy Monaka and “I want to be crisp”
Louis Kahn, the philosopher poet-warrior architect said that if you ask a brick what it wants to be it will say, “I want to be an arch.” And then you can tell that brick that arches are very expensive and the same thing can be accomplished with a concrete lintel or steel beam, and the brink will say, “I still want to be an arch”. The Kyoto approach to cuisine is like this. If you ask monaka what it wants to be, it will say, “I want to be crisp”.

Monaka is a light and airy, extremely crisp cracker or cookie-like wafer that is usually used to make something like an Oreo Cookie; two wafers of monaka with an sweet azuki bean (anko) filling. I am lukewarm on both anko and monaka but I really enjoyed this. Though freshness is of the essence in Japanese cuisine, by the time that you sink your teeth into a pre-made monaka confection, the monaka has lost its crispness due to absorbing water from the anko paste.

Tsuruya Yoshinobu saves the day with a D.I.Y. version! The monaka and anko are packaged separately in airtight packages and you apply the anko paste at the time of consumption.

Kyobeni: Making the ‘Cookie’

What Makes it Kyobeni ‘Kyoto’
Kyo-beni The monaka cookie is in the shape of a maiko’s (geisha, geiko) lipstick compact.
Ogura-an This anko is chunky with many of the azuki beans retaining their shape. Mt Ogura is in the Western Hills of Kyoto, in the Sagano district. As the different species of trees on Mt Ogura change colors in the autumn, spots of differing color are created. To the ancient imagination, this was said to resemble the spots on a deer fawns coat. This anko is not uniform in texture and has variations, and is said to be like Mr Ogura. Hence, Ogura-an. (Kind of a stretch for what I consider my wild imagination.)

Kyobeni Characters on Wafer

京 (kyo, as in Kyoto), べに (beni, red, as in lipstick)

About Tsuruya Yoshinobu
Tsuruya Yoshinobu is a popular wagashi shinise from Nishijin that has successfully expanded and now has stores in many of the department store food courts throughout the country. Tsuruya Yoshinobu’s main store (honten) is on the north-west corner of Imadegawa and Horikawa streets in the Nishijin neighborhood.

One things though about these old shinise shops in Kyoto; they never change. (Or, so they say.)

Kyoto Souvenir Shopping List
Kyobeni ought to make a very good foodie souvenir to take back an authentic and crispy taste of Kyoto.

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Japan’s Answer to ‘Cookies and Cream’ Ice Cream: Soba boro is a crunchy cookie made of soba flour, sugar and egg, a little bit like a Japanese version of biscotti. Chibeta makes a delicious ice cream flavored with soba boro.

In Japan, soba boro is something like a graham cracker or sugar cookie in Western culture, one of the slightly prosaic, common, cheap sweets that taste pretty good.

Soba boro is made with the same buckwheat flour used for soba noodles, you might not think of it as an ideal flavoring for ice cream, but the soba boro is a nice flavoring for ice cream. This flavoring is pretty clever (though not unheard of) and originally might have been a riff on cookies and cream, which is a very popular Häagen-Dazs flavor in Japan.

Soba Boro Ice Cream

Notice the bits of broken soba boro in the ice cream, those darker bits.

Trypical Soba Boro Package

Soba Boro ‘Cookies’

Soba Boro – detail

Chibeta Soba Boro Ice Cream Package

Soba Boro Ice Cream Served

Kyoto Handmade Ice Cream Shop Chibeta
Chibeta is located on in the Nishijin district of Kyoto on Senbon-dori, just south of Imadegawa-dori. From the intersection of Senbon and Imadegawa Streets, you just go three (short) blocks to the south and Chibeta is located on the east corner of Senbon and Sasayacho Streets intersection.

Chibeta Storefront

Chibeta Interior

Sobo Boro Ice Cream and ‘Cookies’

The presentation in the ice cream case at Chibeta is great, they have whole soba boro cookies on top of the ice cream.

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Kyoto Handmade Ice Cream Shop Chibeta: While Japanese love ice cream and Häagen-Dazs is big here, handmade ice cream shops, the likes or which there are several in my hometown, are a rarity. Chibeta, located in Nishijin, the old weaving district of Kyoto, makes great ice cream in very novel flavors. Inspiration for flavors are either traditional Japanese foods or ingredients or seasonal fruit. When I first walked into Chibeta several years ago, it was spring and I was astonished to see sakura mochi ice cream in the ice cream case. It was quite an amalgam of flavors!

While there is no mochi in this ice cream it is flavored with the salted sakura blossoms (shiozakura) and leaves that flavors sakura mochi. It has the pronounced perfumy fragrance identical to sakura mochi that is provided by the blossom and leaf. The taste of the ice cream is very rich and creamy (low fat diary products are not common, I drink 4.4% milk here) and it is salty. Quite unexpected!

Sakura Mochi Ice Cream

‘Sweet’ plus ‘salty’ is a delicious combination. In the US we have salt water taffy (but the taste is not particularly salty, as I recall from my childhood). Sweet and salty are not uncommon in traditional Japanese sweets. I am unaware of it in ice cream though.

I thought that the combination of creamy, sweet (not too sweet), sakura and salt was well worth writing home about. Salted sakura blossom and leaf ought to be easily obtained abroad, so this ice cream ought to be available throughout the world in the near future, I am hoping! (Aspiring sakura mochi ice cream makers abroad can click the ‘Source Delish!’ link above for help sourcing shiozakura.)

If you are in Kyoto and planning on visiting Chibeta, please keep in mind that sakura mochi ice cream is only available in the spring. There are plenty of other wonderful flavors to try though!

More about Sakura Mochi on KyotoFoodie
Sakura Mochi (History and Kanto-style)
Sakura Mochi (Kansai-style)

Sakura Mochi Ice Cream

Sakura Mochi Ice Cream – detail

Notice the pink fleck on the left center and the bits of leaf on the right.

Sakura Mochi

Again, sakura mochi looks like this.

Chibeta Sakura Mochi Ice Cream Package

Kyoto Handmade Ice Cream Shop Chibeta
Chibeta is located on in the Nishijin district of Kyoto on Senbon-dori, just south of Imadegawa-dori. From the intersection of Senbon and Imadegawa Streets, you just go three (short) blocks to the south and Chibeta is located on the east corner of Senbon and Sasayacho Streets intersection.

Chibeta Storefront

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A bowl of udon with only two noodles? Is it a rip-off or a find? Though Tawaraya’s famous udon dish is a bit gimmicky, it does have that special and refined ‘shinise’ taste. This is a dish that has been enjoyed, across the street from an ancient shrine, by several generations of locals and pilgrims.

Today I visited another Nishijin restaurant that I had only heard about but had never been to: Tawaraya.

Tawaraya ‘Two Noodle’ Udon

Tawaraya is located just down the street from the main gate of Kitano Tenmagu Shrine in a very old and beautiful Nishijin Machiya. Tarawaya’s famous ‘meibutsu’ dish is called Nihon Udon, literally two noodles udon. You only get two noodles, so you know that they have to be substaintial. Tawaraya’s udon isn’t just thick, or even really thick, it is unbelievably, ginormously thick!

In Japan, you normally slurp noodles, but not there. Of course you still eat them with chopsticks but instead of slurping up a mouthful at a time, you bite off a mouthful at a time, from a single noodle!

Nihon udon is served with a very rich and rather salty dashi broth and shredded ginger, which you add yourself. I only used about half of mine.

The noodles of course taste like udon, but the feeling is more like eating mochi, very interesting.

Numerous other noodle dishes are available, but I didn’t try them. It looked like the other udon dishes are not served with the super thick udon, but ‘standard’ thickness udon.

Tawaraya Storefront

The machiya is especially beautiful, inside and out. The thick wooden columns and lintels are painted blackish brown. In the genkan entry there is a huge well with a bamboo cover. The floor is made of huge stone slabs, generously sprinkled with water. (Japanese love sprinkling water on pavement, stones and so on.)

While the price of 700 yen is reasonable for a tasty, shinise lunch in Kyoto, if you are a famished traveler the nihon udon probably would not be a substantial enough meal for you. The meal is classic Nishijin style, not a large serving but it is just enough to keeo you going for . If you want to try something novel and a Kyoto meibutsu that many Kyotoites haven’t sampled and you are visiting Nishijin or Kitano Tenmagu Shrine, this is a great place to lunch.

Lunch is quick here and it is not the kind of machiya dining experience in which you can really take your time and enjoy the atmosphere and the food.

Tawaraya Noren Curtain

Tawara means ‘straw bail of rice’, depicted in brush and ink on natural Japanese linen here on the Tawaraya noren curtain. ‘Ya’ means store, or shop.

Tawaraya Storefront ‘Menu’

This shows the other dishes available, having them all pinned to the traditional woodwork is rather unfortunate, not very ‘Nishijin’, too in your face.

Tawaraya ‘Two Noodle’ Udon – Served

The small plate on the lower right is grated ginger. You add as much as you like. For me, half was enough. I drank all my dashi, which you really aren’t supposed to do because of all the salt content. But, it was excellent!

Tawaraya ‘Two Noodle’ Udon

Tawaraya ‘Two Noodle’ Udon

Tawaraya Machiya Interior

This little room, off of the genkan entryway is for show and dipicts what a traditional Nishijin machiya room looks like.

Tawaraya Machiya Interior

Sorry, I didn’t have my usual camera today and was unable to get good photos of the interior.

Tawaraya Machiya Storefront

On the right side of Tawaraya is a small shrine where pregnant women come to pray for a safe delivery. If you are traveling in Japan, and pregenant, you can do lunch at Tawaraya and pray for a safe delivery! What a deal!

English and Service
Tawaraya たわらや
English service: No English menu, but the menu does have photos. You can just point. The staff is friendly and reports that foreign guests frequent the restaurant as it is right down the street from Kitano Tenmagu Shrine.
tel: 075-463-4974
Kyoto-shi Kamigyo-ku Onmae-dori Imakoji-sagaru Bakuro-cho 918 (京都市上京区御前通今小路下ル馬喰町918)
hours 11am-4pm (closed Tuesday)

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Toriiwaro, a shinise located in the old weaving district of Kyoto, offers a single dish for lunch and a single dish for dinner. Toriiwaro’s chicken broth is the heart and soul of their chicken cuisine. Chicken itself is a relative newcomer to the Japanese culinary scene and this 150 year old restaurant is among the oldest in Kyoto serving chicken. The history is palpable here!

Toriiwaro is a restaurant that I had known of for a long time and even though I used to live in the neighborhood, I had never dined there. Thanks to this question (and excellent recommendation) in Kyoto Support, I finally did.

I visited the restaurant with a friend for lunch and we enjoy oyako donburi, shinise style.

Nishijin Shinise Oyako Donburi

Nishijin Shinise Oyako Donburi – Cross Section

This oyako donburi is very rich and soupy!

Nishijin Machiya
Toriiwaro is located in the heart of Nishijin, the old obi and kimono weaving district of Kyoto. This area of Kyoto has the most old traditional machiya houses left. The most spectacular were trading houses, usually dealing in kimono and obi. As Japan changed in the 1970′s and 80′s, most of these companies went bankrupt, as they were not able to change with the times. Today much of old Nishijin has been lost to mindless development but between the parking lots, plastic houses and bathroom tile covered apartment buildings there are still quite a few machiya left, more are being lost literally everyday though. Some are decrepit and some are lovingly maintained and now and again one is meticulously renovated.

Nishijin is one area of Kyoto that travelers won’t want to miss and Toriiwaro is a good place to have a meal and experience a machiya from the inside.

Toriiwaro Dining Room Interior

Toriiwaro Dining Room Interior

Toriiwaro Dining Room Interior

Toriiwaro
Toriiwaro started out in Gion at the end of the Meiji period, about 150 years ago. In 1945 they moved from Gion to their current location in Nishijin and renovated this old machiya into a restaurant. Most of the layout retains the original residential plan. Of course renovating machiya today for restaurants is quite in fashion, however tearing them down is even more in fashion. Many machiya renovated for restaurants retain their shell and structure, but the ‘machiyaness’ is often lost to poor design or over-design. None of that is going on here.

The quaint dining room on the second floor overlooking the garden was quite beautiful. There are numerous tokonoma alcoves, hanging scrolls ikebana flower arrangements and so on.

The tables are quite small and very low. The floor is tatami and you sit on nice thick zabuton cushions.

Toriiwaro Garden and Walkway

The dining room that we ate in was at the end of this sloped wooden walkway on the second floor.

Toriiwaro Garden


Toriiwaro Chicken Cuisine
The soul of Toriiwaro’s cuisine is the rich chicken soup stock. Everyday, for decades now, the carcasses of 30 chickens have been slowly simmered with Kyoto well water for 8 hours to make the next day’s soup.

One Item Dinner Menu: Mizudaki Nabe
Toriiwaro only serves chicken dishes. They are very famous for their mizudaki 地鶏水だき which is local chicken hotpot nabe cooked with their chicken broth. Mizudaki is the only dish offered for dinner and costs 6,300 yen (per person). (We haven’t eaten their mizudaki nabe, but in this photo, it looks pretty good!

One Item Lunch Menu: Oyako Donburi
Lunch is also a single item menu. Toriiwaro’s oyako donburi is a classic and well known in Kyoto. Oyako donburi, literally ‘parent and child’ rice bowl is chicken and egg on top of rice. Their rendition of this common Japanese lunch fare is quite ‘soupy’ with broth and dashi. Usually oyako donburi contains scallions or onions, but not at Toriiwaro. They just use the finest chicken and egg, so it tastes great without the extra flavoring.

A cup of chicken soup is served with the donburi and it has go to be the richest chicken soup broth that I have every had. I went for lunch with a friend from Kyushu and he said that it reminded him of Kyushu’s famous and very rich pork bone stock, tonkotsu.

Toriiwaro Genkan Entry

Toriiwaro Genkan Well

Toriiwaro Sign (鳥岩楼)

As this wooden hand carved and very weathered sign is very old the characters are written in reverse order to modern Japanese.

Toriiwaro Storefront

Toriiwaro is in a large and spectacular Nishijin ‘machiya’.

We were both a bit surprised at the size of the donburi. It was a bit on the small side in terms of volume, but being soupy makes it dense it quite filling. The tsukemono which accompanies the meal could use some improvement. However, 850 yen for a historic and very high quality donburi, in an atmosphere like this, I thought that Toriiwaro was a home run.

I am definitely going back for lunch, and often, and looking forward to having dinner there. I have never had a shinise mizudaki nabe.

As so many of the kimono and obi companies in Nishijin went bankrupt, it can be difficult to find a nice restaurant – they went out of business too. Toriiwaro’s lunch is very reasonably priced, and dinner, at 6,300 yen, while not exactly cheap, isn’t particularly expensive for the kind of food they serve. It seems that smaller, private rooms are available for dinner. At lunch, everyone is seated in the large room shown in the photos.

English and Access
西陣・鳥岩楼 Toriiwarou
English service: No English menu, but at this restaurant you don’t even order. Service is friendly
Website: http://www3.ocn.ne.jp/~mao_utty/toriiwa/ (Japanese language only)
Hours: 12noon to 9pm (closed Thursdays)
Location and Access: You’ll definitely need a map for this one. From the intersection of Imadegawa and Chiekoin streets, walk north on Chiekoin to the first street which is Itsutsujicho and turn left. Toriiwaro is less than a minute walk and is on the left (south) side of the street. You can get to Imadegawa-Chiekoin by bus.
Address
: Kyoto-shi Kamigyo-ku Gotsuji-dori Chiekoin Nishi-iru Minami-gawa (京都市上京区五辻通智恵光院西入南側)
Telephone: 075-441-4004

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