Kaiseki

Broadly: sakizuke, a small opener; hassun, a tray of several bites presented to state the season; mukozuke, sashimi; suimono, a clear soup that is the technical centrepiece; yakimono, something grilled; takiawase, vegetables and protein simmered separately and served together; a palate course; then rice, pickles and miso soup together; and a restrained sweet.

The clear soup is where you judge the kitchen. It is close to transparent, it contains two or three things, and it is made from a dashi struck once from kombu and shaved katsuobushi with nothing to hide behind. If the soup is good the meal will be good.

The hassun is where you see the season stated outright – a maple leaf in November, bamboo in spring, something on the plate that is not food at all. The best houses work to the traditional calendar of seventy-two micro-seasons of about five days each, which is why two visits a fortnight apart give you different meals.

Not more food. A ¥65,000 dinner is not five times the volume of a ¥13,000 lunch. It is: first-cut ingredients, including things with genuinely restricted supply; antique or commissioned ceramics chosen per course; a private tatami room and a garden; a service ratio close to one person per table; and one or two more courses.

The marginal value of all that falls off steeply. For someone eating kaiseki for the first time, the difference between ¥4,500 and ¥13,000 is enormous and the difference between ¥13,000 and ¥65,000 is largely legible only to people who have eaten a lot of it. That is the honest advice: spend at the bottom of the serious range rather than the top of the affordable one.

Lunch is the arbitrage. Most houses serve the same kitchen’s cooking at lunch for between a third and a half of the dinner price, with fewer courses. You also see the garden, which at dinner is dark.

Book ahead. At the top end the reservation is the hard part: Kyoto’s ryotei tradition runs on introduction, and the practical routes for a visitor are a platform such as Tableall or a hotel concierge. Cancellation terms are real and charged.

Declare dietary requirements when you book, not when you sit down. A kaiseki menu is planned and purchased in advance; a vegetarian request made on arrival cannot be accommodated, and fish dashi is in almost everything. If you need a meal without fish stock, the reliable answer in Kyoto is shojin ryori, which excludes it by definition.

On conventions: eat things in the order they are given to you, drink tea when it comes, do not photograph the room without asking, and do not wear strong perfume – the soup is built on aroma and the room is small. None of this is enforced at a visitor, but all of it is noticed.