Hanasaki — Restaurant in Kyoto

We got the ¥6,000 lunch set and it was definitely very good for the price. While it wasn't the most premium meal in terms of ingredients, it more than made up for it in the taste and presentation. Given that more expensive lunch Kaiseki's can easily run into the 5 digit mark, this seemed reasonable to me.

Each dish was delicious. I really liked the vegetable / tsukemono sushi, which was super unique and beautiful. The appetiser dish and the sashimi were also great, and so was the rest of the course.

I would say the flavours in the course do get a bit repetitive. For example I think a very similar base is used for several of the dishes. Nevertheless again, considering the price, I was very satisfied.

The interior is very nice and quiet. The restaurant appears to be sectioned into many small rooms so we only shared the room with two other small groups. A great experience.

You will need to make a booking, this can be done online via their website but you'll need a Japanese phone number. Otherwise asking hotel to book...

Food and staff are amazing. I have never been to a kaiseki restaurant but enjoy sushi and heard it's the thing to get in Kyoto (also my first time here).

The staff spoke English well enough for us to have a point and talk conversation about the menu and Google Translate helped fill the gaps. They were very kind and attentive with the courses. The host even called us a cab, escorted us to the curb, and helped us into the cab while ensuring the cab driver knew where to go.

The food was very good and presented extremely well. I've never had urchin or snails before, and I'm still not sure what a couple of other things were because we were enjoying the meal so much we forgot to ask.

My word of caution to anyone looking to eat here though is it will take 2.5-3 hours for dinner and the meals are charged per person. We ended up missing an event and spending twice what we expected because we didn't look at the reviews close enough. Hanasaki still gets 5 stars because it's not their fault we didn't do the...

Kind of fine. Not worth a strong recommendation but can book if you are in a rush.

Booked through a concierge service. Anything nabe-related (fish pot, shabushabu) requires advance reservation one day before.

Environment is nice. Good sound isolation.

Service is kind of rushed when many patrons are here with each one course requires 10 separate trips for serving. Received better attention once the server recognized that I kind of speak Japanese. The server speaks some Chinese and English though so that's a plus.

Biggest complaint is with コスパ (cost efficiency) of courses. 椀物 and 焼物 needs to be bigger. Steak and sashimi are better than everything else. Synergy between fish and other veggie in dishes is not really there. Had better Kaiseki elsewhere with 12k pp.

In conclusion, does not warrant a negative review but try harder and you may find...