Nishiki Market is an essential sight-seeing spot for food lovers visiting Kyoto. This 400 year-old market extends for 400 meters between Teramachi and Takakura and has the reputation of being a place where you can find anything! Almost everything here is locally produced and reasonably priced. Filled with all kinds of colorful sights, unusual smells and the cries of the market traders this is a lively location and a favorite haunt of photographers! Here below are some photographs and videos from our own stroll down Nishiki.
I wouldn’t touch it myself, but for the curious this (above) is what whale “bacon” looks like. Whale meat is not seen as particularly controversial here and can be commonly found in many stores, restaurants and supermarkets.
Obanzai (above): the seasonal healthy side-dishes unique to Kyoto consisting of boiled sea plants, herring & eggplants, stick codfish, pickled mackerel, tofu, boiled daikon (white radish), fried eggplants and a whole lot more…
Where Sakaimachi Street intersects with Nishikikoji there is a popular shop named こんなもんじゃ (Konnamonja) selling tofu donuts. We decided to give them a try…
You can get a bag of ten donuts for 250 yen. Though they aren’t big, this is still pretty good value for money. They are served hot, straight out of the fryer and have a simple not overly sweet taste. Crunchy on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside, we both give these doughnuts a big thumbs up.
Unfortunately, another discovery we made at the market, of chocolate croquettes (チョコ・コロッケ), did not inspire such a happy reaction…
Finally here are some stinky pickles:
We tried both the pumpkin and the gobo pickles. I’m not usually into pickles but both were really delicious. It was a tough decision deciding which to buy, but as Halloween is coming up, I plumped for the pumpkin. That’s going to be nice with some genmai rice!
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