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Encounter Kyoto people, cultures and food

Traditional Japanese restaurants seek to engage all five of your senses during your dining experience. Arrangement, color, texture, serving technique and sequence is all carefully calligraphed to maximize the pleasure of the diner and keep them in mind of the season. The chef's every action is both utilitarian and kind of performance designed to amaze and delight the customer. Traditional Japanese dining is total sensory experience.

Here we look at two traditional Japanese restaurants which you want to book particularly during Gion Festival, one of the three biggest festivals in Japan in July.

Appreciating the perfect harmony of seasonal foods and dining ware, Wagokoro Izumi

The harmony of food and the plates that they are served on is one of the most notable points in Japanese cuisine. The taste, texture and smell of the food combined with its presentation on a beautiful piece of dinner ware gives customers the perfect dining experience.
Wagokoro Izumi takes special care to select ingredients that match the season and serve these items on beautiful dining ware that aesthetically suit the food. The restaurant is truly special experience and a wonderful way to indulge yourself.

During the Gion festival period, the restaurant serves the food with dishes decorated with patterns of the festival carts, or sometimes food is served in a cart-shaped container.
They have a variety of dishes and plates and from them, we selected the meal served in containers that mimic the famous festival cart called Naginata-boko and Kikusui-boko.

Apart from the Gion festival period, the restaurant prepares some other special dishes giving you a sense of seasons including Japanese Zodiac in New Year, Girl's Day in March and Boy's Day in May.
Make sure you check when they are serving the meals with special plates when you book a table. A private room is recommended.
Wagokoro Izumi

Colorful and well-arranged meals served in a special summer festival lunch box
Hotaru, Kyoto style Kaiseki restaurant at Brighton Hotel Kyoto

The second restaurant is Hotaru in Brighton Hotel Kyoto, located close to the Imperial Palace.
Dining here, you can enjoy an experience as if you are taking part in a crucial ritual of Gion Festival. During the festival there are 33 carts which are pulled along the streets.
Prior to the start of the parade, a sacred ritual is held. The overseers of the team which pull the carts perform this ceremony called Kuji Aratame to determine the order in which the carts will proceed along the parade route. The ritual consists of each member using a folding fan to try to untie a rope used to secure a box.

The restaurant has a special lunch which copies this ritual called 【献招点心: Kenjo Tenshin】. The lunch is supervised by organizers of the Gion Festival ceremony. A rope is used to fasten a two-tiered lunch box that customer must untie with the chopsticks. You can feel the excitement opening the lunch box as if you are doing a magic trick.

The name of the lunch box has two meanings.
"献招,Kenjo" means welcoming guests and "点心,Tenshin" is similar to Chinese dim sum, a meal consisting of a wide variety of small foods.
They want to welcome the customers and make them enjoy different kinds of foods in the lunch box. They all look great and it is delightful to choose which treat you are going to sample next.

According to the manager of the restaurant, Kenjo Tenchin was invented by the first restaurant's head chef, Mr. Mitsuro Harada. He appeared on the famous TV cooking program "The Iron Chef" and defeated an iron chef in the competition. Since the establishment of the hotel, the lunch box has been the only item which has passed down unchanged for over 33 years.

There is a delicious dessert waiting for you after finishing the lunch.
The café & bar Cour Au Midi in the hotel lobby's in the open-air atrium has excellent fruit parfait. They use a plenty of seasonal fruits and they are arranged to look like a swan. We enjoyed the peach parfait.

Hotaru, Brighten Hotel Kyoto