Restaurant Review: Imobo Hirano-ya Honten, Kyoto

This little restaurant makes its home in Maruyama Park in the hills of eastern Kyoto. You can find the English website here.

The name of the game here is "imobo", a dish of cooked potato and preserved cod fish. To round out the experience, we decided to try the "imobo" set, which comes with both the signature dish and a supporting cast of supplemental courses.

As you can see in the picture, we ended up with five small dishes of various types. The imobo itself was by far the most interesting. The potato was some sort of peeled sweet potato, and was steamed to almost bread-like consistency. The cod was dry and little salty, tasting mostly like soy sauce.

Alongside the imobo was "aemono", a cucumber salad with sesame butter. This was basically a featureless and tasteless gel cube in the bottom of a bowl. The texture was interesting.

Next up was "umewan", a clear soup with an egg omelet (a square piece of cooked egg), a "honewart" leaf (large herb leaf), a mushroom, and a boiled fish paste (basically a fish cake), and yuba. We didn't think there was anything exceptional about this.

Then came rice with several types of pickled vegetables, sliced and minced. Delicious--actually my favorite part of the meal.

Also served was "gion-doufu", a hot soup with tofu. Hot apparently meant both temperature and spice, as it had a surprise dollop of wasabi at the bottom.

We washed this down with tea, water, and an order of cold sake. Overall, an interesting meal. I personally enjoyed learning about how pickles--which I previously had avoided after some sinus-clearing mishaps--could enhance the flavor of blander foods like rice. Mary thought the meal was fairly flavorful as well (something we haven't often found in subtle Japanese cuisine), but thought that for what we paid the food was overall too light.

Overall, it was a delicious--if somewhat unsatisfying--meal. I enjoy Japanese food, but at times I find myself missing some of the more filling dishes I normally find at home. In addition, very rarely have I seen anything with an actual crunch in Japanese dishes. The textures seem to err far on the side of soups, pastes, gels, etc.

Recommended as a truly local Kyoto eatery with serious history behind it.