Bote — Local services in Kyoto

TL;DR: Tasty food and a fun experience -- but the real gem is the people!

My fiancee and I have been in Kyoto for a few days now, and tonight was our last night in town. For dinner, we decided to throw out our earlier plans, and just go out and see what we could find in the neighborhood. After a few false leads (lots of places permit smoking, it seems -- a deal-breaker for me) we found ぼて, a kushikatsu place. We'd never done anything like that before, and it looked nice, so we decided to go for it, entering just before the last-entry time.

It was so fun and novel, and the people were absolutely lovely! We had many bite-sized courses of various things, lightly fried, with drinks and dipping sauce/spice mixes. The staff were so nice, and were so patient with me wanting to use my mediocre-at-best Japanese, while being quite capable in English themselves. They taught us about the things they were serving as each came out, and they seemed as enthusiastic as we were to be sharing it with us. It was super fun and a big part of what traveling is all about -- stumbling across a delightful experience and meeting fantastic people in the process. A wonderful time to cap off our last night in Kyoto!

ぼてのすごい皆さん:本当にありがとうございました!...

The course menu is 2 hours during which kushikatsu arrive every 2 minutes. The kushikatsu are smaller than usual but as they arrive every 2 minutes, you end up eating a lot. The menu is set and the ingredients are fried right away, so you are served the same kushikatsu as the other customers at the same time. You can either stay until the 2 hours or let the know when you are full. There is one big counter with less than 20 seats, no table. All this put aside, these are some of the best (if not the best) kushikatsu I ever had!! I highly recommend this restaurant. Not only the food was delicious, but the staff was also lovely. Some examples of kushikatsu I received: pork, tofu, shrimp, yuba, quail egg, lotus root,...

We had a great time at this all-you-can-eat Kushikatsu place! It's simple: you go for the kushikatsu buffet and they place deepfried goodness in front of you until you tell them to stop :) so no need to decide what you want to order. At 2300 Yen the peice is also reasonable. All the dishes are very tasty, the breading is thin and tastes amazing. There are quite many vegetable skewers as well - such as bamboo, lotusroot, asparagus, eggplant. The staff here is lovely, they make you feel at home and try their best to explain the dishes in english :) we were sat right in front of the chef so we could watch him work. I would highly recommend...