deep kyoto

On Boxing Day we had lunch at Oggi on Kawaramachi (not to be confused with Kei’s Cafe Oggi). Oggi is an Italian/Spanish influenced cafe & dining bar in an machiya building full of comfy sofas. They do a pretty good lunch set. For 1000 yen you get a plate of tasty hors d’oeuvres…

…good bread and (on this occasion pumpkin) soup… Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago Ted Taylor introduced me to Cafe dell’Orso a nice new Italian restaurant on Higashi Ichijo Dori. They do a good ￥1000 set lunch there; one pasta of your choosing + salad + focaccia with a home made pate and a wee slice of quiche. I decided to go back for dinner, and try some more dishes. In my pictures below you can see various appetisers and desserts but not the main dishes, as I was so intent on eating them up I forgot to photograph them! Thankfully, this popular Kyoto blogger has some good pictures on his site too, so you can check his pictures out here. I actually had the asparagus and parmesan gratin (￥700) and the tomato and clam spaghetti (￥1100), and washed them down with a cold sharp Peroni beer (￥700). They were all very good. However, the desserts were especially delicious, or as my companion Mewby put it  “yabai!” (which is Japanese for dangerously awesome). There are more pictures below and if you go to flickr you can see the prices too.

This restaurant/cafe is run by two friends, Stefano Bandini and Sasha Ashburne. I asked Stefano why the name is “Orso” which means “bear”, and he told me that his father used to have a gallery on Via dell’Orso in Milan named Galleria dell’Orso. The Caffe shares more than just the name with his father’s gallery though, as the walls here too are used to exhibit local art. At the time I visited they were decorated with the photographic work of Fumio Inoue. And as for the “cucina naturale”? Stefano explains:
“Cucina naturale” means that we are making, as far as possible, everything home made. Salad dressing, sauce, ginger ale etc. are all home made. When possible we also use organic ingredients. So far the dry pasta we have been using is organic. We have now started using fresh pasta, that we buy from a non-organic supplier. In the near future, if economically convenient, we’d like to make our own pasta. In this case we’ll try to find organic semolina…

Caffe dell’Orso, is on the north side of Higashi Ichijo Dori. Go east from Kawabata and it is just a little further past the Sakyou-ku ward office. If you get as far as Higashioji Dori you have gone too far! Here is a useful map.
Tel: 075-761-7600
email: caffedellorso@yahoo.co.jp

Foreigners coming to Japan for the first time go through various rites of passage, one of which is the intense rush of self-satisfaction you get when you finally manage to order a pizza over the telephone in Japanese. Well, alright. Well done, you. However, I do have one small point to make. That over-priced-mush delivered to your lazy-ass-door is not pizza! But I know where you can get some and at a reasonable price too. Pizza Ya, is undoubtedly the finest pizza restaurant in Kyoto. Everything here is prepared by hand by the master using the finest natural ingredients and is (of course) totally free of nasty additives. I’ll let these pictures speak for themselves.
Here’s the olive and anchovy with tomato sauce…

and without tomato sauce…

And here’s a good old fashioned tomato and mushroom topped taste-tastic delight:

I cannot stress enough how good those home-made crispy bases are. And all washed down with ice-cold Sicilian beers – yum. (In Sicilia fa sempre caldo!) As the master makes each pizza from scratch, you’ll have to wait a while, but don’t bolt your pizza when you get it. For one thing, you’ll burn your mouth off, and for another this is pizza for grown-ups and is meant to be savoured.

To find it; head west on Shijo till you are roughly halfway between Kawaramachi and Karasuma (where Starbucks is). Then turn left and go south on Yanaginobanba. Keep your eyes peeled to the left as it’s tucked away in a corner and quite easy to miss. It’s a tiny wee snug of a place so if you are in a large group you might need to book it in advance, but as it’s one of Kyoto’s best kept secrets it doesn’t usually get too busy.

Pizza Ya is open everyday from 12:00 – 23:00 (12:00 – 22:00 on Sundays).
Tel: 075-344-3374
Here’s a map:

View Larger Map