The city of Kyoto is the erstwhile capital of old Japan, and today maintains a lot of its old-world charm and traditions, unlike the ultra modern and chic current-day capital Tokyo.
Kyoto restaurant in Gurgaon, quite like its namesake isn’t chic or modern, but serves authentic Japanese food, for international foodies and Japanese expatriates.
Everything from the restaurant’s decor, to the presentation of the food, to the portions of each dish, is old world – wholesome, and unpretentious. Probably what you’d get in a typical Japanese home.
I dropped in here for lunch with my daughter who absolutely loves Japanese food, and couldn’t get over the variety of dishes she saw on the menu – a throwback of her recent trip to Japan, and her perpetual love for all things Japanese (nurtured and furthered by anime)!
We decided to go basic, and even though we wanted to order everything on the menu, we settled for four dishes – two of sushi, one tempura, and a pork cutlet with curry on rice (see pics).
Thankfully, we stopped at ordering only four dishes, because the portions turned out to be huge, and very filling!
The salmon and prawn sushi rolls were thick and full-bodied, unlike the delicate-light bites of sushi you get from the “delivery-only” sushi restaurants, and fine-dining places. They were tasty, but after eating a couple of them, they became a bit heavy to put down.
The prawn tempura was crisp and light, and delicious.
I loved the outer crispiness and delicious soft-centre of the the pork cutlets, but the curry itself was a bit heavy on salt, and that took away from its total enjoyment… could have been better.
Overall, the food was good, not great.
The service was friendly, but could have been more efficient.
- I had to ask for chopsticks and tezara which they forgot to place on the table
- The sounds of a Bollywood movie on the TV in the restaurant jarred the ambience
- The doorman and other sundry staff kept walking in an out of the restaurant, creating constant disturbances
The decor is functional, and even showed signs of age and neglect.
So quite like most homes, that aren’t very fancy or run like well oiled machines, but serve up filling and satisfying meals, I’d say Kyoto is a decent restaurant, for homestyle Japanese food.
Check it out for sure!
My rating for Kyoto on Zomato, 3.5. More ratings and reviews below…
