My travel philosophy has evolved over time to be generally fairly minimalistic. If you won’t get killed in your sleep, it’s a good enough place to stay. If you might need it, you don’t need it, and you’ll appreciate your pack being so light you can sprint with it. It’s fine to be cheap on transport; for some reason the cheaper transit is, the more of an experience it ends up being. But there is one area of travel where I am willing to spend all kinds of money without batting an eye: Food.

Despite certain possibly masochistic food experiments, I think food is one of the great pleasure of life; food while traveling doubly so. It’s not only a great way not to starve to death, it’s a chance to experience the soul of another culture on a level which is often otherwise inaccessible to the casual passerby. Not only is food so wildly different from country to country, there is a palpable sense of pride and care I can feel when I’m eating food someone has poured their heart into, no matter whether it’s street food, or a Michelin-starred restaurant. This is probably why fast food almost always feels kind of sterile, not that it’s not a worthwhile experience to find out what Japanese Mac is like. (For those curious: The Mega McMuffin! And you thought Japan would be healthier)

One of the cool things about Japan is that food is such a huge part of the culture, and every city and region has their own specialties.  Almost every single Japanese person I have ever met who was not a 10 year old could name these regional specialties.  With no real effort they could tell me that Aomori has really good apples,  that I should try and get some ramen while I’m in Fukuoka, and that Kyoto is famous for tofu.  So while Dan and I were camped out in the Sparkling Dolphins Inn in Kyoto, in between Osaka festivals, and hanging out with strange Frenchmen, we decided that we’d be letting our adventure down if we didn’t eat some of that famous tofu.

Maki over at Just Hungry (a really fantastic blog about Japanese food) once said that no trip to Kyoto could be considered complete without at least one tofu meal.  And so fueled by our own curiosity, and aided by her advice, we decided to hunt down the small, family run tofu-only restaurant, Sou Sou An, she had raved about on her blog.

Sou Sou An, and Kaiseki Ryōri

Our first attempt at making reservations was thwarted by the completely irregular days off which most non-chain businesses in Japan seem to keep.  We gave up on it for the time, and went about enjoying Kyoto.  Conveyor belt ￥100 a plate sushi, watching impromptu concerts down by the river, accidentally walking out of Kyoto into the mountains, you know, the usual stuff one does when one has absolutely no plan.

Dan and I kept our eyes out for other places which might scratch our tofu itch (eww, that sounds contagious), and there were certainly plenty of kaiseki ryori places which might have fit the bill.  But there was something about the idea of eating in a small family operation serving up the single food they had probably specialized in all the way back to before Tokyo was the capital of Japan that made the other places seem halfhearted.

Kaiseki Ryori is ubiquitous in Kyoto.  Throw a rock down any alleyway and it’ll ricochet off one kaiseki restaurant, into another kaiseki restaurant. Or an old person.  This is Japan, and they too are everywhere. Don’t throw rocks in crowded cities kids.

The full story and history of Kaiseki Ryori over time is beyond me.  Google it if you’re interested.  As far as I’m concerned, the salient points are:

1. There are these people called Buddhists, right? Some of them lived in temples, and were monks.
2. They were all “Extravagance in food is desire, let’s make really simple, vegetarian food, out of seasonal crops, so we will not be tempted to revel in excess”.
3. They come up with just like a billion ways to serve tofu and vegetables.
4. At some point, feudal Japanese hipsters rolled up on that piece like bees to honey.
5. High class, fine dining restaurants spring up all over Kyoto (and the rest of Japan) serving food which embodies the same idea as the Buddhists in theory: seasonal, simple, lots of vegetables, but in ironic actuality embodies the complete opposite.  Because it’s basically a form of high class dining evolved out of a movement which actively shunned the idea of high class anything.  Take that, logic.

(For the record, I do actually like Kaiseki Ryori in general.  But I do imagine there are some long-dead monks scratching their heads over its curious evolution.)

So we had other options, but were dragging our feet on committing to one of them.

And then the miracle occurred.  It was probably our last day in Kyoto.  We had no hostel reservations for the night, so one way or another we were back to drifting.  We’d just gotten out of a somewhat famous moss-covered temple in the west of Kyoto.  Our souls at peace, and our legs still slightly cramped from sitting through a Buddhist prayer ceremony.  A feeling came over me, and I decided to give the restaurant one last call.  Even if they were already booked solid for dinner, I couldn’t look the adventure in the eyes if I didn’t give it at least that one last call to make sure.

2 minutes of awkward Japanese phone conversation later, we had our reservation.

The Meal

It turned out we were the only people there that night.  Granted, it was a Thursday.

All of the dishes and the place setting were really wonderful.  Everything I love about Japanese style.  It really helped the meal feel like a rare occasion, and I felt very luck that we didn’t give up.

Sou Sou An is a course menu specialist, so you just have to make the reservation and show up.  Sake is separate though.  We asked the waiter to recommend a local 日本酒 nihonshu, going with a lighter, sweeter sake in the middle of the price scale.  I’m not the greatest lover of rice wine in the world, but this was definitely some of the best I’ve had.  Subtle and smooth.  I was also hard pressed not to steal the bottle it came in.

I may miss a few notes recalling exactly what went into every dish.  It was coming at me in Japanese, and I was translating it for Dan.  It has also been over 2 months (my how the time flies) since we ate there.  Hopefully the pictures speak for themselves though.

Our first course was a really wonderful combination of eggplant, octopus eggs (I think, this seems weirder and weirder the longer I think about it. But I swear that’s what I heard), umi-budou “sea grapes” (a type of seaweed), and aburaage, a thin, lightly fried tofu.  It’s interesting what you remember about a single meal after so much time.  Like I can still remember exactly what the eggs tasted like: salty, a little sweet, and their texture: kind of popped just the tiniest little bit when you bit into them, then they were chewy.  But I can’t remember what the aburaage tasted like, even though I recall it being amazing.

Next came a selection of homemade tofu, all of which were delicious:

• Bottom left: Yuuzu tofu – flavored with a kind of Japanese citrus fruit.
• Top left: Shiso tofu – flavored with a kind of pungent herb.
• Top right: Goma tofu with uni – flavored with sesame, and topped with sea urchin roe.
• Bottom right: Aomame tofu – made from a different variety of “green bean” soy, which results in a faintly green tofu.
• Center: Soy milk with tomatoes – fairly self-explanatory.
• Dish on bottom right: Raw yuuba, with wasabi – Yuuba is a byproduct of the tofu making process. It’s basically a skin which forms on top of the tofu, which is then removed.  It tastes similar to tofu, but the texture is completely different.  Kind of half-chewy, half-creamy.  It’s hard to describe, but amazing.

This was definitely my favorite part of the meal.  The presentation was beyond beautiful, and it’s telling that even after all this time I can recall exactly how each of the different types tasted.  It was really also really fun to compare opinions on all the different tofu with Dan.  Talking about food is almost as much fun as eating food sometimes.

3rd course was a grilled piece of eggplant, with raw yuuba on top of it, green pepper, fish, and something which looked like onions, but tasted as far from onions as is possible without violating the laws of space-time.  The contents of the sauce escape me, but it contained capers, was sort of sweet, sort of sour, and like everything else in the meal, pretty mind-blowingly good.

The 4th course was an aburaage donburi, with that thin fried tofu from before cooked in a light sauce with leeks, and served over rice.  It also came with soup, and my Japan biases want to call it miso soup.  Whether it was or not, is somewhat immaterial.  It was a fantastic dish, because it really featured the tofu and what it was capable of.

The meal ended with a simple vanilla tofu parfait, with yuuzu jam.  Nice to see the versatility of tofu, but by this point Dan and I were already so happy that we were smiling uncontrollably, and losing the ability to speak, instead choosing to stare off blankly into space.

I also feel it necessary to give a shout out to our waiter, who was not only totally on top of things, but also patient as hell explaining complicated Japanese food terms to me, and then waiting while I translated them for Dan.  We also had this theory that he was listening for the click of our chopsticks coming together when we put them down to signal when we were done with one course.  It seemed to work pretty regularly, and we got a kick out of it.  Either way, his timing was pretty fantastic, even if he was cheating.  So thank you, waiter who’s name I have clearly forgotten.  The meal would not have been nearly so perfect without your experienced hand at the till.

Fully satisfied, still grinning ear-to-ear, Dan and I hopped a bus back towards the city center.  We sat around watching a guy play guitar for a while while the crowds grew thinner and thinner.  Then we finally found an internet cafe to curl up in until morning.

Like I said, if you won’t get killed in your sleep, it’s a good enough place to stay.  And if it means I can afford to enjoy a few amazing meals along the way, it’s more than worth it.