Kuishinbo Yamanaka — Restaurant in Kyoto

Very nice family who runs the restaurant but I do not understand the hype. I can’t believe I trekked all the way from the US for this and wasted a meal in Kyoto! The steak was decent but not twice as good as any other steak to justify the cost or the trip out there.

The chef was also very lazy with the cooking. My friend asked for the meat to be cooked medium and he served it medium rare.

The meat is supposed to be high quality but lacked flavor and the cooking technique of everything was too simple. I did not expect the whole place to be DINER grade cooking. The starter was just a baked potato with butter. There was nothing special about this potato. One course was just plain beef broth. There was nothing special about this broth. I thought it was a joke when they served these things but the joke kept on coming. Plain carrots and green beans as vegetables. Very basic cheap looking iceberg salad. Everything tasted like I could easily cook it at home. The exception was the fried garlic slices and the cake for dessert but everything else was super plain commonplace food.

Why did I pay $200 to eat at a diner when I could have gotten a whole kaiseki made with tons of effort, premium seafood and forged vegetables elsewhere? I could have went to Sojiki Nakahigashi or Hassun but I went here instead and wasted a meal! The quality isn’t even comparable.

If you’re American, I think you would be disappointed. I had better, more flavorful A5 Wagyu (both Japanese and fake American Wagyu) in the States. This omi beef isn’t that good. I am baffled why this is famous.

Atmosphere was also very awkward. They don’t speak much English and by default gave us the limited English menu. We didn’t have option to order a hamburger with the egg in the middle or anything else interesting because we were offered a different menu. If you want special dishes, take a photo of the Japanese menu at the door and translate it.

This restaurant was also very far out and in the middle of the no where. We had to taxi for 30 minutes from Higashiyama. Taxi costed us 4,000 yen each way.

Oh my goodness not worth it at all....

This is a destination steakhouse in Kyoto that specializes in a type of Omi Beef. There’s a reason that locals specifically travel here to eat steak. Chef Yamanaka uses a very traditional approach towards selecting his meat. No dry aging or wet aging here. He focuses on minimizing the time from when the cow is slaughtered to when the steak is cooked to make it as fresh and as deliciously tender as possible. And it definitely works!

This restaurant has been around for 47 years and serves amazing steaks. This was my family’s second time visiting the restaurant in less than a year and my kids fell in love with steak because of this place.

Chef Yamanaka and his wife and staff are so gracious and friendly, even though their English is limited. We don’t know when we will be able to visit again but we highly recommend this to anyone who visits Kyoto and is willing to travel just outside of the main city area. You can get there by train and bus from Kyoto station but we found it easier to take the train a couple of stops and just cabbing it.

Chef Yamanaka is getting up there in age so I hope you get a chance to experience his steaks while you...

The local steak restaurant in Kyoto. The place is not in the tourist area, if you travel from Kyoto station or kawaramachi station near takashimaya department store, it would take around 20 minutes if you take a limited express train and then you need to walk around 10-15 minutes or 1 km+ to get to the restaurant. The atmosphere at the restaurant is very cozy and serviced by the friendly staff and attentive chef. The food tastes fantastic. There are various selection of meats as well. The lunch sets of meat are delicious and value for the money. The hamburg set costs around 2800yen and the Tokusen meat steak lunch set costs 7000. The Tokusen meat steak lunch set is very good and...