Back to Kyoto, back to eating sushi in Japan. We’d had reservations at Sanmikouan for lunch on our second day in Kyoto and we also had reservations for dinner. These reservations we had not made ourselves and, frankly, I can’t remember why I’d bothered to make them anyway. Maybe I was worried about hanging around in a line in the heat/humidity outside a good sushi place or not being able to get into one at all? At any rate, we managed to get a reservation at Sushi Komatsu, which was in the general area we were going to be in at the end of that day, not by calling them ourselves but by asking a Japanese colleague who happened to be finishing up a year’s teaching in Kyoto if he would kindly make it for us. He was happy to oblige and so we showed up knowing it was not going to be a hassle. Well, it wasn’t a hassle but it wasn’t exactly the most pleasant meal either. Read on to find out why.

When looking at dinner possibilities for that evening, I had looked at Tabelog for any sushi restaurants in the vicinity that were rated 3.5 or higher (you’re pretty much guaranteed a good meal in Japan at this Tabelog rating), that were open on Tuesdays, and that accepted reservations. Komatsu fit all those requirements and so it’s where we ended up. Closer to the day while googling the location I came across reports from non-Japanese travelers about receiving less than optimal treatment at the restaurant. I wasn’t sure what to make of that but there was no way I was going to renege on a reservation my colleague had made on our behalf. What we encountered bore out some of what I read on Google. I should say here that ambivalence is perhaps a too-positive term to describe what many residents of Kyoto, including business owners, feel towards foreign tourists. On the one hand, the money foreign tourism brings in is sorely needed; on the other, foreign tourists often come with expectations and needs that Japanese restaurants are not set up or interested to fulfill. And there certainly are a LOT of foreign tourists in Kyoto in the summer.

That said, Komatsu has an English language menu dangling outside their door so it can’t be the case that they are opposed to foreign custom and were tricked into giving us a reservation because my Japanese colleague made the call. On the other hand, if they were happy to see us they did a much better job of hiding that happiness than any other restaurant we ate at on this trip (including the yakitori dinner the night before, which had also involved some weirdness at the outset). Some of this may simply be that it’s a sushi counter-only restaurant and the two chefs behind the counter had between very little and absolutely no English. But over the course of their meal their attitude towards us seemed to oscillate between disinterest and amused contempt in a way we had not experienced at any of the other restaurants where minimal to no English was spoken. It’s also the case that the English language menu is more limited than the Japanese menu. The English language menu only lists nigiri by the piece and a few sushi/sashimi combinations plus one tempura set; the Japanese menu has a lot more. There were things on that menu that looked interesting (google translate makes this kind of thing easy to figure out) but we decided to not rock the boat and just ordered from the English menu.

What did we get? The younger boy was not terribly hungry and so he got an order each of the tuna and salmon toro/belly sashimi along with a bowl of rice. The missus got the smaller 8 pc nigiri combo, which came with a bowl of very tasty miso soup (made seemingly with red miso). The older boy and I got the deluxe 10 pc nigiri combo (no soup with this) and added on a few pieces. Neither set had anything out of the ordinary on it. Indeed, they both looked like the kind of nigiri combo you could expect to find in any decent sushi restaurant in the US. The quality of the fish, of course, was much better than at the average decent sushi restaurant in the US. What did we add on? The older boy got a piece of yellowtail and after being told that a lot of other things were not available, I got a piece of kinmedai (golden-eye snapper/splendid alfonsino) and one of aji. They were surprised I asked for kinmedai but produced it readily enough (lightly torched and served as nigiri). The aji request, however, resulted in some consternation. The two chefs consulted and produced a gunkan maki of chopped-up aji with green onion. It had the feel of a piece made by salvaging discarded bits of aji prepared for nigiri but what do I know other than the fact that I didn’t care for it. But that was the only piece that I had any qualms about—the rest were good, if vanilla selections.

For a look at the restaurant, the menu(s) and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next on the food front, from Kyoto and elsewhere.

All of the above plus a Coke and a large beer came to 16, 434 yen or $105, which is certainly a very good value by American standards. That’s a little more than how much we spent, however, at Hinatomaru in Tokyo the previous week, and there we’d both eaten a lot more sushi and a lot more interesting sushi. For these reasons plus the general vibe, I wouldn’t recommend Sushi Komatsu for non-Japanese speakers looking to eat affordable sushi in Kyoto.

Okay, what remains from Kyoto? Only two more reports. I plan to knock both out later this week. Tomorrow I will have one last Twin Cities food list for the month/year. That will cover my favourite dishes eaten at Twin Cities restaurants in 2025. Come back for whichever of these categories interests you more.