• 4
• Very Good but AUTHENTIC

I capitalized the word "authentic" in the title to warn you of exactly that - the food you will get from this restaurant will be good but will be very very Japanese. Some Westerners may find it to be too exotic for their tastes. My girlfriend and I visited because we were in Arashiyama and tried eating at the Tenryu-ji temple, but it was booked full for the day. Despondent, we looked around on Happy Cow for an alternative and found this. Just over the bridge, it is in a refreshingly quiet part of the city. The sitting area is small like most restaurants in Japan, with various Japanese paintings and artifacts decorating the walls. The elderly couple who run the place, as otherwise mentioned, are kind but do not speak English. They were very helpful with the menu, mainly pointing to the "lunch special" and suggesting we get that. This is the veggie bento that is referred to in the Happy Cow listing description. It comes with most or all of the things you see in the pictures listed here. The food is well prepared and arrives quickly, but as I said in the title be warned it is exceptional authentic! I only knew what about 2/3s of the dishes were, and many of the flavors were unfamiliar or offensive to the tongue. There were several types of tofu, including fried, dipped in horseradish sauce, and one which was cold and crumbly. We had a vew slices of veggies, some fermented soy crumbles, a star shaped serving of sticky rice, sea weed salad, and a whole bunch of other stuff I couldn't identify. One was a gelatinous blob which had no flavor and a rather unsatisfying texture. To wash it all down we were served a warm concoction which another patron told us was a seaweed tea. Overall I'm glad we went, if you are looking for authentic and reasonably costed vegan Japanese then this is the place for you. That being said to my Western taste buds it wasn't very satisfying, and indeed repulsive at times, and the portions were too meager to fill my stomach. We ended up get hungry again only a few hours later. Despite all of that I will give this restaurant four stars for its speed, cost, presentation, kindness, and willingness to put up with foreigners puzzling over their food :).